Boston Flora

Tag: Gardens Trust

  • Tuesday, October 8, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – A History of Gardens 2: The Baroque in England, Online

    What is a garden? Why were they created as they were? What influences were at play in garden making, and how have gardens evolved and developed over time? These are the questions we will explore as we traverse the history of gardens through the ages.

    Following on from our opening talks on early gardens, this second series will examine how gardens developed during the 17th century. We will explore how exotic plants from around the world started to appear in European gardens, and were captured in botanical art, before the tumultuous impact of the English civil wars on gardens and gardening from the 1640s. The second part of the century saw the rise of extravagant, dramatic styles, now known as baroque gardens and exemplified by the work of André Le Nôtre for the Sun King at Versailles. We will explore these gardens through an analysis of the work of Le Nôtre and his contemporaries in France, and the series will end with a talk scrutinizing how the European baroque style played out in England.

    This ticket – purchase through Eventbrite HERE – is for this individual talk and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions via the links below, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire [second] series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25) Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards.

    After the civil war Charles and many of his court circle went into exile in Europe where they saw the glories of French and Dutch gardens. They fell in love with their ornate geometric formal layout, and on their return at the Restoration tried to recreate the grandeur of the European baroque in British gardens. At the same time the foundation of the Royal Society encouraged the development of botany as a new science while the financial revolution of the late 17th century spread an interest in gardening into the ranks of the new ‘middling sort’ and led to a thriving horticultural scene to serve them.

    Dr David Marsh was awarded his PhD in 2005 for a study of the ‘Gardens and Gardeners of Later-Stuart London’ and has been lecturing and supervising research in Garden History ever since. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Buckingham and is course director for their MA in Garden History. A trustee of the Gardens Trust from 2016-2023, he helped set up and run the Trust’s on-line lecture programme and is the author of a weekly blog about garden history.

  • Wednesday, October 9, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm – Gardens and the Written Word: Travel Writing and Garden Visiting

    Through an exploration of drama, diaries, novels and magazines, this Gardens Trust Wednesday five part series will examine how writers have used gardens and plants to evoke memories, capture ideas of taste and fashion, satirize attitudes, champion social change and give deeper meaning to the world. The chosen authors cover almost four centuries of literature and, through examining their words, we can gain new understandings of the roles, meanings and emotive power of historic landscapes and horticulture. This ticket link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gardens-and-the-written-word-tickets-930348275737 is for the entire series of 5 talks, or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8 via the links on that page. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). All purchases are handled through Eventbrite.

    Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 1 week afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the first talk. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 weeks.

    Week Two of the series, on October 9, is Gardens and the Written Word: Travel Writing and Garden Visiting with Louise Crawley. The pastime of domestic travel for pleasure which swept through England’s ‘polite’ society in the long eighteenth century (c.1700 – c.1820) left a remarkable legacy of ‘amateur’ travel writing. Domestic tourists left detailed accounts of their thoughts and perceptions on country houses and designed landscapes, wider landscape scenes, and towns and cities, as they sought in-person experiences through which to demonstrate their grasp of taste and culture. This talk will explore the phenomenon of garden visiting and landscape appreciation as documented in the travel writing produced by tourists of the period. It will consider the experiences of travelers, how they perceived and interacted with landscapes and recorded their thoughts. It will also consider the concept of a specific descriptive ‘language’ of landscape, shared and understood by ‘polite’ people, and the value of travel writing for our understandings of historic gardens and landscapes today.

    Louise Crawley is a postgraduate researcher in Landscape History at the University of East Anglia, specializing in eighteenth-century travel writing accounts of the British landscape. Recently, Louise has worked as landscape advisor and historian for English Heritage, and as a freelance consultant specializing in landscape conservation and restoration plans. This talk is based on research undertaken as part of her doctoral thesis examining the concept of a wider codified vocabulary of descriptive terms used to describe specific landscape forms and to communicate ‘taste’ in the eighteenth century. The image below shows the fictional Doctor Syntax sketching a lake in his tour diary, a satirical swipe at travellers created by William Combe and illustrated by Thomas Rowlandson (1813).


  • Tuesday, October 1, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – A History of Gardens 2 – The French Baroque Garden, Online

    What is a garden? Why were they created as they were? What influences were at play in garden making, and how have gardens evolved and developed over time? These are the questions we will explore as we traverse the history of gardens through the ages.

    Following on from our opening talks on early gardens, this second series will examine how gardens developed during the 17th century. We will explore how exotic plants from around the world started to appear in European gardens, and were captured in botanical art, before the tumultuous impact of the English civil wars on gardens and gardening from the 1640s. The second part of the century saw the rise of extravagant, dramatic styles, now known as baroque gardens and exemplified by the work of André Le Nôtre for the Sun King at Versailles. We will explore these gardens through an analysis of the work of Le Nôtre and his contemporaries in France, and the series will end with a talk scrutinizing how the European baroque style played out in England.

    This ticket – purchase through Eventbrite HERE – is for this individual talk and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions via the links below, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire [second] series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25) Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards.

    Visiting André Le Nôtre’s masterpieces, Chantilly, Vaux, Saint-Cloud, Sceaux, Versailles, the Grand Trianon, we encounter a series of static images, born out of the head of a ‘humble’ polymath for the greater glory of a megalomaniacal master. The myth of the sudden invention of the Louis XIV Grand Manner was carefully cultivated even at the time, but the roots of the Le Nôtrean taste stretched back to previous reigns, and designers. But what was the purpose of these linear perspectives and expanses of gravel? Of what were they made? How were they built and maintained?

    This talk examines the construction and formal vocabulary of these compositions, but also their antecedents in garden and military architecture, and their usages and significance in the social and political practices of the court. The last part of the talk considers the afterlife of the idiom, its evolution under Louis XV and Louis XVI, its neglect and destruction in the 19th century, and its rehabilitation in the Belle Époque.

    Dr Gabriel Wick is a landscape historian and curator. He teaches history of architecture and urbanism at the Paris campus of New York University and also lectures for the École du Louvre. He received his master’s in landscape architecture from UC Berkeley, a master’s of historic landscape conservation from ÉNSA-Versailles, and a doctorate in history from Queen Mary – University of London. His most recent book Gardens in Revolution: landscapes and political culture in France, 1760–1792 will be published in autumn 2024.

  • Wednesday, September 25, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Restoration in Action: Northants: Burghley Walled Garden, Online

    This September 25 Zoom is an illustrated talk presented by the Gardens Trust in partnership with Northamptonshire Gardens Trust, part of our Restoration in Action series. Here the Head Gardener will be discussing the gardens’ extensive history, and an outline of the plans for bringing them back to life.

    The Restoration in Action series helps us to learn about researching, reporting and restoring a selection of glorious parks and gardens in the county. The chosen projects showcase the skills, sensitivities and determination needed to document and conserve historic sites. Burghley House, near Stamford in Lincolnshire, is one of the most impressive surviving mansions from the 16th century, built by William Cecil, Lord High Chancellor, in honor of Queen Elizabeth 1. George London and Moses Cook laid out elaborate formal gardens in the late 17th century and then, from the 1750s, the estate was transformed as one of Capability Brown’s biggest and most important commissions.

    Built over 300 years ago, the walled gardens at Burghley are substantial, encompassing 6.5 acres (2.5 hectares) inside 10-foot (3m) tall walls. They are an impressive site even now, years after the gardens fell silent and the last spade turned its final sod of soil.

    Today, the gardens are stirring, and plans are afoot to breathe life back into this amazing place, where 26 glass houses once stood and 120 gardeners labored behind those tall walls. Born in Worcester, lecturer Joe Whitehead grew up in the Bristol area and would spend his childhood summers at the estate where his grandfather worked who (like his father before him) was a head gardener, so not surprisingly he followed in their footsteps and, with a passion for plants and gardening, Joe pursued a career in horticulture.

    Joe’s first positions were as an undergardener at Hollywell Hall, Lincolnshire, and then Burghley House, somewhere he would unexpectedly return. He studied for a National Diploma in Horticulture and then the prestigious Wisley Diploma in Practical Horticulture, training and working in the RHS gardens for two years. Joe also holds the RHS Diploma levels 2 and 3. After Wisley, head gardener roles at Salle Park and Raveningham Hall, both in Norfolk, and a period running his own business, led him back to Burghley House, where as head gardener he has been managing the 46 acres of gardens for 6 years.

    This ticket is for this individual session and costs £8. Gardens Trust and Northamptonshire Gardens Trust Members may purchase tickets at £6. 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 .

  • Tuesday, September 24, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – A History of Gardens 2: Between Kings, Gardens of the Mid 17th Century, Online

    What is a garden? Why were they created as they were? What influences were at play in garden making, and how have gardens evolved and developed over time? These are the questions we will explore as we traverse the history of gardens through the ages.

    Following on from our opening talks on early gardens, this second series will examine how gardens developed during the 17th century. We will explore how exotic plants from around the world started to appear in European gardens, and were captured in botanical art, before the tumultuous impact of the English civil wars on gardens and gardening from the 1640s. The second part of the century saw the rise of extravagant, dramatic styles, now known as baroque gardens and exemplified by the work of André Le Nôtre for the Sun King at Versailles. We will explore these gardens through an analysis of the work of Le Nôtre and his contemporaries in France, and the series will end with a talk scrutinising how the European baroque style played out in England.

    This ticket – purchase through Eventbrite HERE – is for this individual talk and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions via the links below, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire [second] series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25) Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards.

    After decades of relative peace and prosperity in Britain, the mid 17th century saw the country plunged into civil war, resulting in almost twenty years of turmoil, instability and uncertainty. This talk will examine the effect that this had on gardens as their owners returned – from the wars, from exile, from prison – and retreated to their neglected estates. With no role to play in the new Commonwealth regime, they turned to rebuilding, improving and in some cases, creating wonderful new gardens, such as the ones built by John Evelyn at Sayes Court and Wotton House. These gardens, and the fascinating stories behind them, will be the subject of this talk.

    Dr Jill Francis is an early modern historian, specializing in gardens and gardening in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. She has taught history at the universities of Birmingham and Worcester, and still contributes to the programme of activities for both the Centre for Midlands History and Winterbourne House and Gardens. She is currently involved with delivering the online lecture programme for the Gardens Trust, and also works at the Shakespeare Institute Library in Stratford-upon-Avon. Her book, Gardens and Gardening in Early Modern England and Wales, was published by Yale University Press in June 2018.

  • Tuesday, September 17, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern – History of Gardens 2 – Botany and Botanical Art, Online

    The identification, depiction and celebration of plants is a key aspect of garden history, and one in which women have played a particularly important part. This highly illustrated talk will explore the role of female artists in floral and botanic art, focusing particularly on those working in the 17th century, but also looking forward to later artists. It will examine works by both ‘amateur’ and professional female artists including Giovanna Garzonni, Maria van Oosterwijck, Maria Sibylla Merian, Rachel Ruysch, Elizabeth Blackwell, Mary Moser, Mary Delany and Augusta Withers.

    This September 17 The Gardens Trust virtual talk is the second in our online course the History of Gardens 2, on Tuesdays. Sponsored by Wooden Books. Tickets £8 each (GT members £6) Sign up through Eventbrite HERE.

    This ticket is for this individual talk and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire [second] series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25).

    Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards.

    Dr Twigs Way is a garden historian, writer and researcher. Much of her work has concentrated on the roles played by women in all forms of garden and plant-related spheres, and she is increasingly fascinated on the overlap between art, fashion, textiles and gardens. Her history of the chrysanthemum in art and culture was published by Reaktion in 2020 following an earlier work on the carnation. Twigs teaches for the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and, from September 2024, will also be co-Course Director of the MA in Garden History at the University of Buckingham.

  • Tuesday, September 10, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – A History of Gardens 2 – Early 17th Century Plants and Gardens, Online

    This is the first in The Gardens Trust’s online course The History of Gardens 2, on Tuesdays. Sponsored by Wooden Books. Tickets £8 each (GT members £6) Tickets available through Eventbrite 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.

    What is a garden? Why were they created as they were? What influences were at play in garden making, and how have gardens evolved and developed over time? These are the questions we will explore as we traverse the history of gardens through the ages.

    Following on from our opening talks on early gardens, this second series will examine how gardens developed during the 17th century. We will explore how exotic plants from around the world started to appear in European gardens, and were captured in botanical art, before the tumultuous impact of the English civil wars on gardens and gardening from the 1640s. The second part of the century saw the rise of extravagant, dramatic styles, now known as baroque gardens and exemplified by the work of André Le Nôtre for the Sun King at Versailles. We will explore these gardens through an analysis of the work of Le Nôtre and his contemporaries in France, and the series will end with a talk scrutinising how the European baroque style played out in England.

    “God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.” This is the well-known opening line of Francis Bacon’s essay On Gardens, first published in 1625. It sums up the early 17th century’s growing obsession with plants and horticulture. While Continental designers, engineers and sculptors transformed the structure and style of the English garden, plants began to take center stage. They became desirable consumer items, eagerly sought out and highly prized as European exploration opened up the world. At the same time the Worshipful Company of Gardeners chartered by James I helped establish horticulture not only as a profession covering garden making, market gardening and the first proper plant nurseries but as an important contributor to the national economy.

    Dr David Marsh was awarded his PhD in 2005 for a study of the ‘Gardens and Gardeners of Later-Stuart London’ and has been lecturing and supervising research in Garden History ever since. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Buckingham and is course director for their MA in Garden History. A trustee of the Gardens Trust from 2016-2023, he helped set up and run the Trust’s on-line lecture program and is the author of a weekly blog about garden history.

  • Tuesday, June 4, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Botanists and Botanical Art: Marianne North, Online

    The Gardens Trust presents a series of three talks on botanists and botanical art across three centuries, exploring people and illustrations that have defined, recorded and celebrated the world of plants in all their distinctiveness and intricacy. We start the series with exciting new research on previously unremarked botanical images on the paneling of a fine Jacobean house in Hampshire. In the second lecture we will examine the extraordinary set of almost a thousand paper collages of exotic plants produced by an 18th century woman of advanced years, before finishing with tales of a Victorian lady traveler who sought out rare plants in their native lands, not to collect – but to paint. Tickets for the three part series may be purchased through Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/botanists-and-botanical-art-tickets-834657221217 Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.

    The final lecture on June 4 will focus on Marianne North (1830 – 1890) who lived an unconventional life painting exotic and rare plants in their native lands. Living and traveling with the ‘liberty of a wild bird’ but maintaining the dress and manners of a Victorian lady, the pursuit of plants took her around the world whilst her paintings were destined for Kew. This talk explores Marianne North’s work, her social context and the eventual creation of her gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

    Dr Twigs Way is a researcher, writer and speaker in garden history, fascinated by the past and intrigued by the role of flowers, gardens and landscape in art and culture of all kinds. Her research reflects that endless curiosity and her books on plants and gardens explore themes of symbolism and meaning, class and gender, art and literature. Currently (2024) delivering a series of talks for the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens on the overlap between garden design and textile fashion through the ages. Image: detail, View of the Jesuit College of Caracas, Minas Geraes, Brazil by Marianne North, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, CC BY-NC-ND

  • Wednesday, May 22, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Bandstands: History, Decline, and Revival

    The People’s Parks are one of the finest legacies of the Victorian age. Designed and bequeathed to the masses as part of a movement encouraging green spaces and recreation, the public park came to symbolize one of the greatest contributions of the era.

    Opened in increasing numbers in the industrious nineteenth century, by the end of the twentieth century many of our parks had become sadly neglected. But today they remain outdoor places for everyone to enjoy, acting as children’s play areas, sports grounds and even concert venues and have grown in popularity since the global pandemic. But what do we really know about them? The Gardens Trust is sponsoring a series of six weekly online lectures with Paul Rabbitts on Wednesdays from April 17 – May 22.

    Buy a ticket is for the entire course of 6 sessions. or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions, costing £8. [Gardens Trust members may purchase tickets at £31.50 for the series or £6 each talk]. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/peoples-parks-tickets-852833737667

    The final talk in this series takes place May 22, an entertaining talk on that icon of public parks – the Victorian and Edwardian bandstand, so common once upon a time. This lecture covers their origins from the mid-18th century Pleasure Gardens to their heyday during the Victorian park making era, and includes the impact of a small number of Scottish foundries, to the plethora of brass bands that grew up across the country. We also cover the subsequent decline post World War Two and why we lost so many of them. Their history is fascinating and covers not just brass bands but also cites Bowie, the Bay City Rollers and Dire Straits as users of these least cynical of public spaces. And what about the recent revival of the bandstand in our public parks? This is a highly illustrative talk that engages many and fascinates the listener and has had excellent feedback from those who have heard it.

  • Tuesday, May 21, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Botanists and Botanical Art: Early Botanists and the Botanical Paintings at Bramshill, Online

    The Gardens Trust presents a series of three talks on botanists and botanical art across three centuries, exploring people and illustrations that have defined, recorded and celebrated the world of plants in all their distinctiveness and intricacy. We start the series with exciting new research on previously unremarked botanical images on the paneling of a fine Jacobean house in Hampshire. In the second lecture we will examine the extraordinary set of almost a thousand paper collages of exotic plants produced by an 18th century woman of advanced years, before finishing with tales of a Victorian lady traveler who sought out rare plants in their native lands, not to collect – but to paint. Tickets for the three part series may be purchased through Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/botanists-and-botanical-art-tickets-834657221217 Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.

    On May 21, Anne Benson will speak on Early Botanists and the Botanical Paintings at Bramshill, Hampshire. Bramshill House in north-east Hampshire is one of the largest, surviving Jacobean mansions in England. What is seen today is mostly the work commissioned by Edward, 11th Baron Zouche of Harringworth (1556̶ 1665), from between 1605 and 1625. The Grade 1-listed gardens and parkland also contain features from the Jacobean period including walled gardens, avenues and the destination gardens of a maze and a lake with a man-made island. This talk first presents these features and then continues with Ann’s recent research on the botanical images painted on the panelling of a first-floor room in the north-west wing of the house. Previously rarely referenced and under-researched, these surviving botanical paintings are shown to be of international significance in terms of their date of creation, botanical detail, state of preservation and through Bramshill’s historic owners, for associations with the early botanists and horticulturalists of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

    Dr Anne Benson FSA FRHistS is a garden historian specializing in the Tudor and Stuart periods. She is best known for her multidisciplinary research on the ancestral homes of the Dukes of Beaufort, namely Troy House and Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire and on the Jacobean Bramshill estate, Hampshire. Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship funding enabled Ann to research the garden history of Cambridge colleges founded in medieval and Tudor times. Subsequently, she was awarded a Beaufort Fellowship at St John’s College, Cambridge. Ann is a former teacher, director of university post-graduate courses, Arts Society lecturer and Cabinet Office consultant. She continues to lecture for national bodies on garden history research.