Boston Flora

Tag: Gardens Trust

  • 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.

  • Wednesday, January 8, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Picturing a New World: The Photographs of Susan Jellicoe

    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. On January 8, the first lecture will be on The Photographs of Susan Jellicoe.

    Susan Pares Jellicoe (1907-1986) joined the office of Jellicoe, Page and Wilson as a secretary in 1936 and went on to become a highly regarded honorary member of the Institute of Landscape Architects, collaborating with Geoffrey Jellicoe in all aspects of his work. When the International Federation of Landscape Architects was formed after the war, Susan Jellicoe’s skills as a linguist, and her wartime experiences, were instrumental in promoting international understanding between nations. The work of Geoffrey Jellicoe has overshadowed Susan’s contribution to the study of twentieth century landscape design, and yet she was an accomplished plantswoman, writer, editor, and a skilled self-taught photographer.

    Drawing on Susan Jellicoe’s collection of thousands of small black and white photographs, taken during the 1950s and 60s and pasted on sheets of brown paper, this talk will consider her extensive journey with a camera, capturing the post war landscape. Sylvia Crowe commented of the time ‘we all thought we could make a new world’ and this unique archive creates a visual narrative of the mid twentieth century, filtered through the preoccupations of a distinctly modern eye.

    After a career in education Sally Ingram completed an MA in Garden History at Birkbeck, University of London, and has continued to research aspects of garden history for a number of projects. Her particular interest is in the twentieth century landscape and her MA dissertation considered the design of memorial parks and gardens in the post war era. She studied the work of Geoffrey Jellicoe when investigating his design for the roof garden at Harvey’s department store in Guildford and discovered Susan Jellicoe’s photograph albums, in the archive at the Landscape Institute. She has continued to explore this fascinating collection of over 6,000 images – now at MERL – and its significance in the history of the post war urban landscape.

  • Wednesday, December 11, 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm Eastern – Queen Caroline and the Invention of the Landscape Garden

    Join The Gardens Trust in partnership with Kent Gardens Trust on December 11 for a special online lecture. Conventional ideas of the invention of the landscape garden in 1730s England attribute the creation of this new form of naturalistic garden design to male gardeners (William Kent, Charles Bridgeman) and/or landowners (the Earl of Carlisle, the Prince of Wales, Lord Cobham, General Dormer, etc.).

    This talk will consider the activities of Caroline of Ansbach, Queen Caroline 1727-37 (wife of George II), and debates within her intellectual circle. The focus will be on underlying religio-scientific concepts crucial to developing views of the natural world that were taking place in Caroline’s lifetime (1683-1737). Such views were a pre-condition of the new form of garden that took shape in the 1730s. We will also focus on the intellectual ramifications of her transition from Ansbach to England, as Princess of Wales, in 1714. For particular reasons she was responsible for the design of a garden building that the talk will represent as seminal to the landscape garden.

    The gardens involved are those at Richmond, Kensington Palace, and Stowe.

    Michael Charlesworth gained his PhD in History and Theory of Art from the University of Kent at Canterbury. He is currently a professor of art history at the University of Texas at Austin teaching 19th century European painting and photography. He has written the first full length biography of Reginald Farrer, a critical life of Derek Jarman, as well as major articles on early photography, the picturesque, and 18th century panoramic drawing. His book Landscape and Vision in Nineteenth-Century Britain and France (Routledge) was published in 2008

    This ticket is for this special session and costs £8. Gardens Trust and Kent Gardens Trust Members may purchase tickets at £6, through the Eventbrite link 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 (If you do not receive this link, please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks .


  • Tuesday, December 3, 4:00 am – 5:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Humphry Repton: From Picturesque Provocateur to Regency Ornamentalist, Online

    The Georgian era is often seen as the pinnacle of garden design in England, as the formal, baroque style of the late 17th century gave way to the looser, more naturalistic designs of what became known as the English Landscape Movement. It was a style that spread around the world.

    This Gardens Trust online series will trace the development of the landscape style, beginning with early examples full of decorative garden buildings and classical allusions, and then the impact of England’s most famous landscape designer, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who laid out vast parklands with rolling lawns, serpentine lakes and clumps of trees. As we’ll see, the century ended with a clash between the wild, rugged aesthetic of the Picturesque and the start of a return to formality and ornamentation in garden-making.

    As well as examining individual gardens and designers, we will explore some of the myriad social and economic influences at work on Georgian design. These included political upheaval, changing land use, foreign trade and the lure of exoticism, alongside the impact of the European ‘Grand Tour’ undertaken by wealthy men, which instilled an admiration for classical art and poetry, and for French and Italian landscape painting.

    Humphry Repton (1752–1818) initially styled himself Capability Brown’s successor: the next great improver of landed property. This was a bold and ambitious stance, which opened him up to persecution from the new school of Picturesque aesthetes. These men championed a Romantic appreciation for rugged and sublime topography, and a disdain for the manicured lawns of Brown and his contemporaries which had come before.

    Ultimately forced to develop an entirely new aesthetic, Repton’s later designs were crowded with terraces, trellises, bowers, bowling greens and gravel walks. He called this new style ‘Ornamental Gardening’. Immortalized by Jane Austen in her novel Mansfield Park, Repton’s ingenious Red Books, with their ‘before and after’ overlays, helped nurture an appreciation for landscape amongst his Regency clients. This lecture traces Repton’s career from his early entanglement with the Picturesque writers, to the progressive ornamental style of the turn of a new century.

    Dr. Laura Mayer will lecture on December 3 for The Gardens Trust. Register HERE

  • Tuesday, November 26, 4:00 am – 5:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Chinoiserie: Tea, Trade Routes, and a Taste for the Exotic, Online

    The Georgian era is often seen as the pinnacle of garden design in England, as the formal, baroque style of the late 17th century gave way to the looser, more naturalistic designs of what became known as the English Landscape Movement. It was a style that spread around the world.

    This Gardens Trust online series will trace the development of the landscape style, beginning with early examples full of decorative garden buildings and classical allusions, and then the impact of England’s most famous landscape designer, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who laid out vast parklands with rolling lawns, serpentine lakes and clumps of trees. As we’ll see, the century ended with a clash between the wild, rugged aesthetic of the Picturesque and the start of a return to formality and ornamentation in garden-making.

    As well as examining individual gardens and designers, we will explore some of the myriad social and economic influences at work on Georgian design. These included political upheaval, changing land use, foreign trade and the lure of exoticism, alongside the impact of the European ‘Grand Tour’ undertaken by wealthy men, which instilled an admiration for classical art and poetry, and for French and Italian landscape painting.

    The fourth lecture in this Gardens Trust series brings back Dr Laura Mayer on November 26. Chinoiserie – an early European interest in the arts, architecture and gardening of the Far East – blossomed in Georgian Britain, coinciding with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and modern consumerist society. Soon, every landscape park and public pleasure ground in the country had a Chinese pagoda, bridge, barge or brightly painted tea-house in which to drink tea, that most fashionable of imported luxuries.

    This lecture will examine the politics and trade routes of eighteenth-century Britain, as well as the growing craze for informal gardening. This had been gaining traction since 1685 when William Temple published his appraisal of East Asian garden asymmetry, without ever having traveled to China. The talk will consider the authenticity of British Chinoiserie, and reveal what, if anything, the landscape style owes to Asia’s early gardens. In short, just how English was the English landscape garden after all? Image: The Chinese House at Shugborough, Staffordshire, photo c.2009 © Laura Mayer. Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-history-of-gardens-3-tickets-1011314337407