Boston Flora

Tag: Gardens Trust

  • Tuesday, February 11, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Plantmania: Tulipmania, Online

    The desire to possess new, rare and thus expensive plants has been a feature of garden-making since it began and continues to be so; as recently as February 2022 bulbs of Galanthus plicatus ‘Golden Tears’ were changing hands for £1,850 each. But at least this obsession didn’t bankrupt a nation! This Gardens Trust mini-series tells the story of the mania that developed around three of the most sought-after plants: tulips, rhododendrons and orchids. Each lecture will delve into how, and when these the plants arrived and what happened when they did, explaining along the way just what it was about them that caused such a furor – and a hole in the pocket.

    This ticket (register HERE) is for this February 11 individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 3 sessions at a cost of £21 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 or £15.75). Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

    Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    It’s the species from the Tien Shan mountains, not the ones native to the Mediterranean region, that caused all the fuss. Perhaps first arriving into Germany the late 1550s, the first illustration (of Tulipa suaveolens) was published there in 1561. But it was the Dutch Republic of the 1620 when things began to go bonkers and bulbs nearly bust the country. And yet tulips remain as Dutch as clogs with the tulip bulb export industry worth €117m in 2022 and Keukenhoff and the bulb fields of the ‘Bollenstreek’ major tourist attractions.

    Dr Toby Musgrave FSA FLS is a garden and plants historian, horticulturist and author. His books have covered a wide range of subjects from head gardeners to heritage fruit and vegetables, plant hunters to paradise gardens, and a biography of Sir Joseph Banks. He lives in Denmark where he gardens one of the historic de Runde Haver and when not gardening, teaching or writing he works as a submersible pilot.

    Image: Jacob Marrel, Four Tulips, detail, c.1635, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain

  • Wednesday, February 26, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Places to Play: Molineux Stadium, From Pleasure Garden to Premier League

    Designed landscapes are typically defined as places laid out for artistic effect or aesthetic purposes, somewhere to contemplate and admire. Yet many people have a much more active relationship with outdoor spaces, engaging with them for jogging, cycling, ball games, playgrounds and carnival rides. They are places to play.

    This Gardens Trust series will examine the relationship between historic designed landscapes and organized recreation. We’ll be exploring children’s outdoor play, a world-famous theme park set among a Grade 1 Regency landscape, a Premier League football stadium that was once a Victorian pleasure ground, an early 18th-century estate that is now a golf course, and a Victorian public park which was opposed by local workers despite its claimed recreational and health-giving benefits.

    This ticket (register HERE) is for this individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 or £26.25). Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    Week Three: While many football clubs up and down the country built their stadiums upon disused waste land, some decided gardens and other green spaces were suitable homes for their pitch. Molineux Stadium, the home of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, was once the site of a renowned pleasure garden. Hosting fetes, exhibitions and more genteel sports, it claimed to cater to every class of Victorian Wolverhampton. Upon its decline, Northampton Brewery sold it to the football club, and Molineux was born.

    Wolves were certainly not the only football club to build upon green spaces like gardens, nurseries and orchards; but there is marked symbolic and socioeconomic change that comes with the new uses of these sites.

    This talk uses Molineux Stadium as a case study for these changes. From pleasure garden to Premier League, leisure is now athleisure, visitors are now primarily working class and production is now marked by performance.

    Liv Beards is an independent researcher from Wolverhampton. After completing her Masters on Shakespeare, focusing on garden history, she has recently begun researching the sporting history of her hometown. A freelance writer and editor, she has previously been a cultural reviewer for art, music, film and television and has contributed to art shows, and academic conferences.

    ©Liv Beards

  • Tuesday, February 4, 5:00 am – 6:30 am – History of Gardens 4 – The Quest for Novelty: Colonialism, Trade, and Plant Collecting in the 19th Century

    During the early nineteenth century, new plant introductions into Britain accelerated as opportunities for plant collecting opened up through colonial exploration and the growth of British trade. This talk explores how plants came to Britain in the 19th century and who was responsible for the influx of new discoveries. We will examine how sponsorship sent plant collectors to South America, southern Africa, the west coast of North America and China, and how networks of colonial service and trade enabled private landowners, botanic gardens and nursery businesses to expand their collections. We will also consider how these new plants were used in British gardens and landscapes, and the inventions required for them to thrive. This Gardens Trust lecture will be given on Zoom on February 4. The ticket for this February 4 individual talk costs £8 Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks . https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/history-of-gardens-4-the-quest-for-novelty-tickets-1099999140039?aff=oddtdtcreator

    Dr Keith Alcorn is a Visiting Tutor in the History department at Royal Holloway University London, where he is researching the trading and colonial networks that enabled plant introductions to Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries. His book, The Empire in the Garden: How Exotic Plants Came to Britain, will be published by Yale University Press in 2027. When not researching or writing, Keith attempts to garden on sandy soil at the edge of the Surrey hills.

  • Wednesday, February 5, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Marjory Allen: From ILA to DIY, Online

    Join Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading for the beginning of an online series of talks in partnership with the Gardens Trust, on six women – Susan Jellicoe, Sheila Haywood, Brenda Colvin, Mary Mitchell, Marjory Allen and Marian Thompson – who all contributed to the expertise, development and awareness of the landscape profession and in so many different ways. A ticket is for the series of 6 talks at £42 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8. (Gardens Trust and FOLAR members £6 each or all 6 for £31.50). There will be an opportunity for Q & A after each session. Please note that the 6th and final talk in this series is on 30th April. Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. For tickets visit www.eventbriteco.uk

    Join us in this online series to hear from these special speakers – Sally Ingram, Paula Laycock, Hal Moggridge, Joy Burgess, Wendy Titman and Bruce Thompson – who have each known, worked with, or researched one of these six remarkable women. On February 5, the focus turns to Marjory Allen.

    Marjory Allen wrought change through everything she did. Known, by some, for the Selfridges Roof Garden in London – a relatively new concept in garden design in the 1920’s – it was the impetus for the garden which matters most. This beautiful place wasn’t created for wealthy customers but for shop girls who Marjory believed needed, nay deserved, to breath fresh(er) air and rise above the world.

    Marjory created gardens and landscapes for famous and wealthy people, but she was also a pioneer of spaces for children, not for making beautiful environments for them but for their right to have and make their own places. These Adventure Playgrounds were once described as ‘children’s heaven and adults hell’. It was not how they looked but what they signified and enabled that mattered, essentially risk. Exploring the dichotomy that was Lady Marjory Allen of Hurtwood provides a fascinating insight into the life of a truly remarkable woman.

    Through her design and development consultancy Wendy Titman has been involved in the creation of environments for children and young people in schools, nurseries and children’s centres in the UK. Her research into the semiotics of children’s environments, published as Special Places, Special People – the hidden curriculum of school grounds (Southgate Publishers, 1994) led to a period of international work. Prior to this Wendy was involved with provision for children outside school including the development of adventure playgrounds during which time she had the pleasure of knowing Marjory Allen.

  • Wednesday, February 12, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Places to Play: Giggles in the Garden

    Designed landscapes are typically defined as places laid out for artistic effect or aesthetic purposes, somewhere to contemplate and admire. Yet many people have a much more active relationship with outdoor spaces, engaging with them for jogging, cycling, ball games, playgrounds and carnival rides. They are places to play.

    This Gardens Trust series will examine the relationship between historic designed landscapes and organized recreation. We’ll be exploring children’s outdoor play, a world-famous theme park set among a Grade 1 Regency landscape, a Premier League football stadium that was once a Victorian pleasure ground, an early 18th-century estate that is now a golf course, and a Victorian public park which was opposed by local workers despite its claimed recreational and health-giving benefits.

    This ticket (register HERE) is for this individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 or £26.25). Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    Week One: Who amongst us doesn’t hold parks and gardens at the heart of their childhood memories? And so it has been for garden-lovers for many hundreds of years. In this light-hearted lecture, Linden Groves will take us by the hand for a skip through the history of play in gardens and parks. Together, we’ll sail boats and roll hoops in 18th century estates, then crowd onto Giant Strides and swings in public parks from the 19th- and 20th centuries, before taking a look at play in historic parks and gardens today.

    Linden Groves is fascinated by the ways people experience historic parks and gardens, with a particular interest in how children have played in them through the centuries. She has researched the subject for English Heritage, the National Trust and the Royal Parks and is currently writing a book on the history of playgrounds. Linden is the author of the influential Beyond the Playground booklet (The Garden History Society, 2010), and has worked with Battle Abbey, Walmer Castle, Sudbury Children’s Country House, Land of the Fanns and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, on how to engage families with historic places. She also runs HahaHopscotch, offering Traditional Garden Games for children in historic landscapes. Linden is Head of Operations and Strategy at the Gardens Trust. The image below is of the world-famous playground at Wicksteed Park, Kettering, courtesy of Linden Groves.

  • Tuesday, January 21, 5:00 am – 6:30 am (but recorded) – A History of Gardens 4 – The Rise of the Gardening Press

    With improvements in literacy, and the end of taxes on newspapers, the nineteenth-century garden press emerged with a willing press corps of garden writers, many of whom were private gardeners, florists or nurserymen, who wielded immense power. From the monthly periodical, the Gardeners’ Magazine, launched by J C Loudon to weekly newspapers such as Glenny’s Gardeners’ Gazette and Lindley’s Gardeners’ Chronicle these publications significantly contributed to the professionalization of the horticultural trade. Editors of gardening newspapers needed interesting copy to entertain their readership and advertising to grow their profits. New horticultural institutions needed nationwide coverage to promote their organizational aims to recruit new members and obtain subscriptions. Dialogues of working voices (at the editor’s discretion) can be seen in the gardening newspapers and reveal what was going on in gardeners’ lives and their concerns. JC Loudon pioneered this method of correspondence and knowledge exchange between professional and amateur gardeners. We shall explore his legacy and how it improved the field of horticultural education for all, in this Gardens Trust online lecture on January 21.

    After working in the design industry, Francesca Murray studied horticulture and garden design at Berkshire College of Agriculture before running her own garden design business. She has an MA in Garden History and is currently in her fourth year of a PhD at Queen Mary’s University of London, researching nineteenth-century gardeners, nurserymen, and the associations that came to their aid. She is a trustee of the Gardens Trust and a life member of Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust and London Parks and Gardens Trust as well as Archivist and guest speaker for Perennial (formerly known as the Gardeners Royal Benevolent Institution). She leads walks around London on the nineteenth-century horticultural press and is a regular speaker on garden history to horticultural societies around the country. The ticket for this individual talk costs £8. Click HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks .

  • Wednesday, January 29, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Mary Mitchell: The Postwar Landscape Architect of the North, Online

    In January, join Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading for the beginning of an online series of talks in partnership with the Gardens Trust, on six women – Susan Jellicoe, Sheila Haywood, Brenda Colvin, Mary Mitchell, Marjory Allen and Marian Thompson – who all contributed to the expertise, development and awareness of the landscape profession and in so many different ways. A ticket is for the series of 6 talks at £42 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8. (Gardens Trust and FOLAR members £6 each or all 6 for £31.50). There will be an opportunity for Q & A after each session. Please note that the 6th and final talk in this series is on 30th April. Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. For tickets visit www.eventbriteco.uk

    Join us in this online series to hear from these special speakers – Sally Ingram, Paula Laycock, Hal Moggridge, Joy Burgess, Wendy Titman and Bruce Thompson – who have each known, worked with, or researched one of these six remarkable women.

    Mary Mitchell was a prolific and influential landscape architect during the post war period. Much of her early work was influenced by Lady Marjory Allen’s approach to play which could be seen across the north of England during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Mary Mitchell was Birmingham City’s first ever landscape architect, which was where she began to explore her own convictions over creative, playful and art-filled landscapes, seen most clearly in a number of housing sites that she worked on with Sheppard Fidler, the City Architect. It was also here that she made a name for herself on the international stage as a world-renowned designer before setting up her own practice which she ran successfully for more than twenty years. The full extent of Mitchell’s work and the impact it had on the north of England is yet to be fully understood. This talk will explore Mitchell’s life, some of her creative collaborations, as well as some projects which show her approach to design and what made it so unique.

    Joy Burgess is a lecturer in landscape studies at the University of Liverpool where she is currently carrying out her PhD in collaboration with Historic England. Her PhD looks to tell the histories of female landscape architects in post-war Britain. Joy also works on the editorial team for the Women’s History Network Journal and has recently been a research assistant alongside Professor Luca Csepely-Knorr on the AHRC projects – IFLA 75: Uncovering hidden histories in Landscape Architecture and Women of the Welfare Landscape.

  • Saturday, January 18 – February 8, 10:30 am – 4:30 pm GMT – Looking at Historic Landscapes and Gardens: An Introduction to Garden History 2025, Online

    Hosted in partnership with The Gardens Trust, this Garden Museum livestreamed course provides an introduction to the history of gardens and garden design through the ages. This course offers students with little or no previous knowledge a chronological panorama of the development of garden history from medieval and Tudor gardens through to the twentieth century, and will end with the 21st century, tomorrow’s history in the making!

    The sixteen lectures will run over four Saturdays, January 18 – February 8, and be delivered by well-known speakers and experts in their fields.

    Week One: Saturday January 18 2025

    • What is  garden history with Tim Richardson
    • Overview of the early modern era with Jill Francis
    • John Tradescant naturalist, gardener, collector with speaker TBA
    • Looking at surviving 17th century gardens with Jill Francis

    Week Two: Saturday 25 January 2025

    • Setting the scene of the Georgian era with Dr. Twigs Way
    • Looking at landscape parks with Dr .Twigs Way
    • Looking follies and grottoes with Peter Cooke
    • Understanding picturesque landscapes with Dr. Deborah Evans

    Week Three: Saturday 1 February 2025

    • Setting the scene on the Victorian era with Francesca Murray
    • High Victorian design with Ben Dark
    • Working class gardening with Ben Dark
    • Looking at the arts and crafts garden with Cherrill Sands

    Week Four: Saturday 8 February 2025

    Modern women gardeners with Caroline Holmes

    Overview of the 20th & 21st Century with Tim Richardson

    Post industrial landscapes with John Little

    Planting styles in the 20th century flower garden with Andrew Wilson

    Livestream 4-week course: £100. Livestream single day: £30. Register at www.gardenmuseum.org.uk

  • Wednesday, January 22, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Brenda Colvin, Online

    In January, join Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading for the beginning of an online series of talks in partnership with the Gardens Trust, on six women – Susan Jellicoe, Sheila Haywood, Brenda Colvin, Mary Mitchell, Marjory Allen and Marian Thompson – who all contributed to the expertise, development and awareness of the landscape profession and in so many different ways. A ticket is for the series of 6 talks at £42 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8. (Gardens Trust and FOLAR members £6 each or all 6 for £31.50). There will be an opportunity for Q & A after each session. Please note that the 6th and final talk in this series is on 30th April. Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. For tickets visit www.eventbriteco.uk

    Join us in this online series to hear from these special speakers – Sally Ingram, Paula Laycock, Hal Moggridge, Joy Burgess, Wendy Titman and Bruce Thompson – who have each known, worked with, or researched one of these six remarkable women.

    The third talk in the series will touch on Brenda’s childhood in India and her early practice (1922-39) designing gardens, which she continued throughout her career. Because she was a thinker about landscape, the talk will be interspersed with brief quotations from her writings. She was elected president of the Institute of Landscape Architects in 1951, the first woman to lead a British design or environmental profession. From the late 1940s Brenda shared her office with Sylvia Crowe but practising separately. The talk will illustrate how they, like other colleagues, broadened the scope of the landscape profession in the latter part of the 20th century. Brenda, independent in thought and practice, worked on government sponsored activities, for instance as consultant for large projects for the Central Electricity Generating Board, a Water Authority, a military town and a new university. Committed to continuity, she set up the basis for perpetuation of her practice and its ideas.

    Hal Moggridge was introduced to Brenda Colvin by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, in whose office he had worked after qualifying as an architect. He then became a landscape architect, and in 1969 entered into partnership with Brenda who had retired her practice to the Cotswolds. They worked together harmoniously, and their landscape architectural practice, Colvin & Moggridge, continued after Brenda’s death in 1981 with Chris Carter joining as partner; and still thrives, now under new directors.

    Between 1969 and 2005 Colvin & Moggridge handled 1,430 commissions, varying between large long-term rural industrial landscapes, reservoirs, cement works, quarries, a waste ash hill, and new parks and gardens including consultancy to the Inner London Royal Parks and creation of the new National Botanic Garden of Wales.

    Hal was elected president of the Landscape Institute in 1979. He has represented the Institute on the International Federation of Landscape Architects, was a commissioner of the Royal Fine Art Commission, served on the National Trust’s Architectural Panel, and on ICOMOS Cultural Landscapes Committees. He has explained the practice’s approach in an illustrated book: Slow Growth – on the Art of Landscape Architecture (Unicorn, 2017). He has been awarded the OBE in 1986, the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour in 1999 and the Landscape Institute Medal.

  • Wednesday, January 15, 1:00 pm – 12:30 pm Eastern – Sheila Haywood and Cambridge, Online

    In January, join Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading for the beginning of an online series of talks in partnership with the Gardens Trust, on six women – Susan Jellicoe, Sheila Haywood, Brenda Colvin, Mary Mitchell, Marjory Allen and Marian Thompson – who all contributed to the expertise, development and awareness of the landscape profession and in so many different ways. A ticket is for the series of 6 talks at £42 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8. (Gardens Trust and FOLAR members £6 each or all 6 for £31.50). There will be an opportunity for Q & A after each session. Please note that the 6th and final talk in this series is on 30th April. Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. For tickets visit www.eventbriteco.uk

    Join us in this online series to hear from these special speakers – Sally Ingram, Paula Laycock, Hal Moggridge, Joy Burgess, Wendy Titman and Bruce Thompson – who have each known, worked with, or researched one of these six remarkable women. The second in the series takes place January 15, on Sheila Haywood.

    Sheila Haywood (1911-1993) was one of the pioneers of modernism in landscape architecture. Studying at the Architectural Association in London from 1929-1934 during a period of intense student activism and change in the architectural profession, Haywood was not as well-known as some of her contemporaries. However, she played a significant role in the development of the profession of landscape architecture, as is reflected in her achievements.

    It was her role as Assistant to Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe from 1939-1949 that was pivotal to her career, and which saw her interest transferring from buildings to the setting of the buildings themselves. While her work in the extractive industries would be a mainstay of her career, she also ventured into other areas, including that of Landscape Consultant for Bracknell New Town (1950-1974). This talk, however, focuses on Haywood’s work in Cambridge, first on the New Addenbrooke’s Hospital Site (1958-1962), then on the landscaping of Churchill College (1959-1974), and finally as Landscape Consultant for Wolfson College, Cambridge (1974-1980).

    Paula Laycock is a By-Fellow of Churchill College where she has worked for the past 36 years, for the main part as College Registrar, and in more recent years, in the Churchill Archives Centre where she carries out oral history interviews. However, it was in the College’s own archives that Paula first came across Haywood’s 1959 landscape drawings for the College. Her interest in Haywood’s work and subsequent research resulted in the publication of a guide to the College’s grounds and gardens, and then to a detailed exploration of their development from 1959 to the present day, now recorded in her book Portrait of a Landscape (Churchill College, 2022). Paula also produced an online biography of Sheila Haywood in 2016, and she has recently completed work on a detailed biography entitled Sheila Haywood: A Life in Landscape, with a view to publication in 2025.