Boston Flora

Tag: Linden Groves

  • 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, March 5, 12:00 noon Eastern – Writing Up Garden History, Online

    The Gardens Trust will offer a free online session explaining how researchers can submit their findings to The Gardens Trust, on Tuesday, March 5. Open to all. This free session will explore the options for submitting your research, whether for our annual essay prize and new research symposium, or as a full academic article for publication in our peer-reviewed journal, Garden History. We’ll explain the surprisingly wide range of topics that fall within our remit and offer lots of tips and ideas to help you succeed. The session is aimed at post-graduate students and independent researchers in the UK and abroad – anyone who has new research findings to share in English on topics that will be of interest to our audience. The panel presentation will be recorded for those who can’t attend the live event, and there will be a chance at the end for you to ask questions.

    Linden Groves is Head of Operations & Strategy at the Gardens Trust. Her co-authored book The Gardens of English Heritage won the Garden Media Guild’s ‘Inspirational Book of the Year’ award in 2010 and she is now working on a history of playgrounds for Liverpool University Press.

    Dr Clare Hickman is Reader in Environmental and Medical History at Newcastle University and a Trustee of the Gardens Trust. She has published widely on landscape and garden history and was the first winner of the Garden History Essay prize in 2015.

    Dr Barbara Simms is editor of Garden History, the Journal of the Gardens Trust, and chair of the Mavis Batey Essay Prize. From 2014-21 she was course director for the MA in Garden and Landscape History at the Institute of Historical Research.

    Register HERE.

  • Monday, April 19, 1:00 pm – 12:30 pm – Historic Landscapes for All: Learning to Share, Online

    The second in a 10-part lecture of the Gardens Trust series, celebrating the voices beginning to be heard, online once a week on Mondays, may be heard April 19 at 1 pm Eastern.

    From 2018-20 the Gardens Trust ran a Lottery-funded project called Sharing Repton: Historic Landscapes for All. This helped us learn how to engage new and diverse people with historic parks and gardens but was only a small part of a much longer journey. This ticket which may be purchased through Eventbrite is for this individual session and costs £5, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 10 sessions at a cost of £40 (students £15) via the link here.

    Linden Groves is the Gardens Trust’s Strategic Development Officer. Linden has worked for the Gardens Trust since its inception in 2015, and before that for both the Garden History Society and the Association of Gardens Trusts. She is passionate about helping everyone enjoy historic parks and gardens to the full and moving garden history out of its niche and into the mainstream.