Boston Flora

Tag: Hampton Court

  • Wednesday, September 20, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Head Gardeners at Historic Sites: Graham Dillamore at Hampton Court and Kensington Palace

    The Gardens Trust will focus on head gardeners working at historic sites. Split into two 5-week series on Wednesdays, the season will kick off with an exploration of the head gardener role over the past two centuries, followed by talks exploring how individual head gardeners are balancing the heritage of their site, the wishes of its owner(s) and their own interests and experience. We’ll hear about the role from both seasoned head gardeners and those more recently appointed. Join us to learn about the challenges they face, including climate change, as well as the joys of horticulture and heritage.

    At the end of the first series, we will also be offering a FREE roundtable discussion on the different career paths available to head gardeners, and ways of encouraging more people to enter or progress in the profession. Please register separately for this.

    You may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £20 via the link here. [Gardens Trust members may use their promo code for a discount.] Please register separately for the roundtable discussion, or for individual sessions by following the links HERE. 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 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    On September 20 we will hear from Graham Dillamore. Hampton Court and Kensington Palace are two of the six sites run today by the charity Historic Royal Palaces. Hampton Court Palace’s world-famous gardens include 60 acres of spectacular formal gardens and 750 acres (304 hectares) of parkland, all set within a loop of the River Thames. Kensington Gardens began life as a King’s playground; for over 100 years, the gardens were part of Hyde Park and hosted Henry VIII’s huge deer chase. Shaped by successive monarchs, highlights of the 107-hectare site today include Bridgeman’s Serpentine, the Long Water, Italian Garden, the Edwardian sunken garden, and a new wildflower meadow.

    Graham Dillamore is head gardener at Hampton Court and Kensington Palace and has cared for royal gardens for over 40 years. He started his career as an apprentice gardener at London’s Royal Parks, before becoming head gardener at Kensington Palace, and then joining the Royal Household to maintain the private gardens of the Prince and Princess of Wales in the 1980s. After transferring his skills to Hampton Court, Graham worked on several major landscape restoration projects including the recreation of William III’s Privy Garden (below), Home Parks tree avenues, the Royal Kitchen Gardens and more recently, the transformation of the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales.

  • Tuesday, February 7, 10:00 am – 11:30 am, GMT – “The Canale Beautifull”, Online

    One of King Charles II’s first acts as a restored monarch was to build canals in his gardens at Hampton Court and St James’ Palace. These were not to be used by commercial barges but were long and thin water features in formal garden settings. His example led to a fashion for ‘garden canals’ and this talk will explore their origins, their Continental parallels and, in particular, their enthusiastic adoption in Suffolk, where over 50 examples were constructed before the fashion waned in the face of the cohorts of William Kent and Capability Brown and they slid into unrecognized obscurity.

    This is the fifth in a Gardens Trust series of lectures on Garden Archaeology. It will take place February 7 at 10 am GMT and is £5 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 1 week

    Edward Martin is the chairman of the Suffolk Gardens Trust and a vice-president of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History. Now retired, he worked as an archaeologist with Suffolk County Council for many years, specialising in prehistory and historic landscape studies, and has lectured widely on the archaeology, history, landscape, buildings and gardens of Suffolk. His published works cover a diversity of subjects, from Bronze Age burial mounds, through medieval field systems to 18th-century gardens.

  • Wednesday, February 3, 2:00 pm – Eltham Palace and Gardens: Medieval Palace and Millionaire’s Mansion, Online

    Wednesday, February 3, 2:00 pm – Eltham Palace and Gardens: Medieval Palace and Millionaire’s Mansion, Online

    Eltham Palace in Southeast London has an 800-year history of luxury and glamour. In her richly illustrated Royal Oak Foundation February 3 online lecture, Dr. Dominique Bouchard will explore the story of Eltham from its first mention in the Domesday survey of 1086, to its role as the 1490s boyhood home of King Henry VIII, to its transformation into a chic Art Deco residence.

    In its early history Eltham was renovated and added onto by England’s most famous kings and queens so much so that by the late 16th century it was larger and more ornate than Hampton Court Palace! By the early 17th century, however, Eltham fell into decline. During the English Civil War, Parliamentary troops ransacked the palace, after which it remained a ruin for more than 250 years. In 1936 it was saved and transformed by eccentric millionaires Stephen and Virginia Courtauld. They combined the medieval hall with a new, ultra-modern 1930s Art Deco residence. After WWII the Ministry of Works became responsible for management of the palace. English Heritage took over in 1995 and is restoring the interiors of the 20th-century house and the gardens to their 1930s Courtauld-era appearance.

    Dr. Dominique Bouchard is Head of Learning and Interpretation at English Heritage where she leads teams delivering award-winning interpretation and exhibitions, publishing, learning, youth engagement, digital curatorial and contemporary arts commissioning across more than 420 historic buildings, monuments and sites, from Stonehenge to Hadrian’s Wall and from Osborne House to a Cold War bunker in York. She has led exhibitions, public programmes and learning in museums in Hong Kong, Ireland and the UK. Dominique holds a BS in Applied Physics and BA in Mathematics from Columbia University in New York and received her DPhil at the University of Oxford in classical archaeology. Her doctoral research explored the relationship between public art, identity and power in Medieval and early Renaissance south Italy. Dominique is a trustee of the William Morris Society and has worked as expert consultant for the European Commission, Council of Europe and UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the area of museums, heritage and divided societies.

    $20 general admission. Registration required. Visit https://www.royal-oak.org/events/winter-2021-online-lectures-tours-eltham-palace-and-garden/