London today is one of the greenest cities in the world but was it always so? This London Parks & Gardens Trust online talk on February 5 at 1 pm will explore the origins and changing uses of the city’s gardens and green spaces - parks, churchyards, commercial gardens as well as private gardens – during the 16th to 18th centuries,  to show they were not just places to hunt, grow food or bury the dead but places of  elaborate displays of wealth and status for the rich, a source of pleasure and recreation for the less well-to-do, and a place of very hard work for the garden laborers who toiled in them.

Dr David Marsh researches, lectures and writes on any and all aspects of garden history, and helps organise the Garden History seminar at London University’s Institute of Historical Research. He is a trustee of the Gardens Trust and is the founder and inspiration behind their  extensive on-line lecture program. For the last ten years he has also written a weekly garden history blog for them which you can find at  thegardenstrust.blog – he has written over 400 posts so far! £5.00 The ticket entitles you to attend the online lecture as well as accessing a recording of the event for a week after. Register at https://bookwhen.com/londongardenstrust#focus=ev-smpl-20240205180000