Travel with art historian Christopher Noey and the Royal Oak Foundation on February 7 – 22 through the great cultural centers of northern and western India, where imperial grandeur and deep spiritual traditions come alive alongside the dynamic contemporary art scenes of Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai. You will be staying in fabulous hotels – The Imperial Hotel in Delhi, Brijrama Palace Hotel in Varanasi, Taj Bengal in Kolkata, Vivanta Aurangabad in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, and the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai. There will be private lunches in restored mansions, an Aarti ceremony on a private boat on the Ganges River at sunset, special access at the Indian Museum in Kolkata, a home-cooked Bangali lunch with a prominent art collector, visits to the Ajanta (pictured below) and Ellora Caves, and much more, For the brochure, visit https://www.royal-oak.org//srv/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MTA-ROF-Noey-India-260207-brochure.pdf
Christopher Noey is an art historian, author, and Emmy Award-winning producer of films on art and culture. At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, he created video installations for a wide range of exhibitions and served as series director for the innovative online features 82nd & Fifth and The Artist Project. An expert in Asian and Islamic art, Mr. Noey has taught at Williams College and the City College of New York.
On this unique Royal Oak Foundation tour May 21 – 26, 2026, we will explore beautiful gardens around the handsome historic city of Avignon. These range from a formal Italianate park, to the gardens of a privately owned abbey, an 18th-century hunting pavilion and a winery. Gracious chateau owners will host us for lunch on two occasions. During our stay we will also appreciate how contemporary designers have transformed the garden scene, often combining traditional terracing with plantings of scented, drought-resistant native shrubs and herbs. View the brochure at https://www.royal-oak.org//srv/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Royal-Oak-Gardens-of-Provence-2026-Brochure-sm.pdf
With the rise of the English landscape movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, gardens became a reflection of taste, fashion, and social ambition. The sweeping designs of Capability Brown and the picturesque visions of Humphry Repton reshaped the countryside, while at the same time, an expanding global plant trade introduced new flowers and shrubs into Regency gardens. These developments were more than aesthetic—they carried cultural, economic, and even political significance, shaping the very spaces Jane Austen and her contemporaries inhabited. Molly Williams, author of Jane Austen’s Garden: A Botanical Tour of the Classic Novels will trace the history of these gardens and the plants that filled them, revealing how horticulture and literature together illuminate Austen’s Regency world.
The Royal Oak Society presents Molly Williams in a live presentation on October 29 but more importantly, in a Zoom recording of her presentation available to registrants from October 30 through December 31. For complete information visit https://www.royal-oak.org/event/zoom-rental-gardens-in-jane-austens-works/
Molly Williams is the author of Jane Austen’s Garden: A Botanical Tour of the Classic Novels; The Junior Plant Lover’s Handbook: A Green-Thumb Guide for Kids; How to Speak Flower; Taming the Potted Beast: The Strange and Sensational History of the Not-So-Humble Houseplant; and Killer Plants: Growing and Caring for Flytraps, Pitcher Plants and Other Deadly Flora. Molly is a Gates Cambridge scholar and PhD student at the University of Cambridge, where she studies nineteenth century literature and horticulture. She is an avid houseplant collector, gardener, florist, and teacher of many things, including creative writing. If you would like to reach her, she’s probably in a greenhouse somewhere, or you can visit her Instagram — @theplantladi.
The Zoom rental is $15 for Royal Oak members, $25 for nonmembers.
The Royal Oak Society hosts an online recorded lecture with John Goodall on Wednesday, May 7 at noon Eastern. With the global expansion of 17th-century European trade networks, plant collecting became a matter of both economic and intellectual interest in Britain. Exotic fruits and flowers were prized as prestigious displays of wealth and refinement, fueling an obsession with horticulture among the elite. The fascination began with pineapples and soon extended to citrus trees; a trend particularly championed by King William III. By the late 18th century, a glass house or ‘greenhouse’ was an architectural mark of a gentleman’s garden, even if it was only to grow delicate fruits such as apricots or peaches. John Goodall, Architectural Editor at Country Life, will trace the rise, fall, and revival of Britain’s historic glasshouses, exploring their cultural significance and the renewed interest in their restoration today.
John Goodall has been architectural editor at Country Life since 2007 and has contributed to CL since 1994. He is the author of several books, including English House Style: From the Archives of Country Lifeand The English Castle (2011). English Castlereceived numerous accolades: the 2011 Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion and the 2013 Historians of British Art Book Prize (pre-1800). The work also received the G. T. Clark Prize for 2007–2012. He read history at Durham University and took an MA and Ph.D. in architectural history from the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 2003 he joined English Heritage as a senior properties historian. He had written several guidebooks for both English Heritage and the National Trust. He acted in 2007 as series consultant for the BBC 1 series How We Built Britain. Other projects include contributions to the photographic book The English Cathedralby Peter Marlow. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2001. Goodall is a patron of the Castle Studies Trust, a UK registered charity founded in 2012.
The Cotswold hills with their mellow stone cottages, elegant manor houses and imposing castles contain some of the most important historic gardens in England. A virtual history of English gardens can be found in Gloucestershire, parts of Oxfordshire, and Warwickshire. Although little survives of the Roman and medieval periods, some very early gardens remain: Thornbury Castle and Horton Court are two remarkable early 16th century gardens. From the 17th century, the restored gardens at Westbury Court are well known, while ghosts of the late 17th-century gardens at Dyrham Park are more challenging to discover.
The 18th century is represented in the poetic garden at Rousham, William Kent’s best surviving landscape, as well as in Capability Brown’s most famous garden at Blenheim Palace. Quirkier examples of the English landscape are found at Painswick and Sezincote.
Modern gardens, too, are impressive: the Arts and Crafts garden at Snowshill and especially Major Lawrence Johnston’s Hidcote Manor, which became a model for so many later garden designs. This lecture covers the history of the English garden, using both famous and little-known gardens, all set in the most unspoiled part of England.
Presenter Paula Henderson has degrees in art history (University of Chicago, M.A.) and Ph.D. in architectural history from the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London). She lectures widely in Britain (where she lived for 43 years) and the United States and has published over seventy articles on English Houses and their settings. Her first book, The Tudor House and Garden: Architecture and Landscape in the 16th and 17th Centuries (published by Yale University Press), won the Berger Prize for the outstanding contribution to the history of British art 2005. Treehouses (co-authored with Adam Mornement) was published by Francis Lincoln, also in 2005. She is currently completing books on London gardens in the age of Shakespeare and on the Landscape as Art.
She taught courses for the Courtauld Institute of Art Institute for many years and, most recently for the V&A museum. She has lectures for the Paul Mellon Center for British Art, the Architectural Association, both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Birkbeck college, Christie’s Education, The Inchbald School of Design, the V&A museum, the Tate Gallery, The Garden History Society, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Sotheby’s Educational Studies and many others. She led tours for the Courtauld Institute to Florence (‘Gardens of the Medici’) Debyshire (‘Elizabethan architecture’) and the Cotswolds (‘Gardens of the Cotswolds’). While living in England, she also traveled to the United States to lecture for the Society of Architectural Historians, The Garden Club of America, The Royal Oak Foundation, and the Williamsburg Institute. She is a Fellow of Society of Antiquaries of London and now splits her time between Nantucket, MA and Williamsburg, VA.
This Royal Oak Foundation presentation is $40 for the live event at the General Society Library, 20 W. 44th Street in NYC, with reception following, $30 for the rental, and you may register for the Virtual option HERE or the live option, including reception, HERE
From the 17th century onwards, Chinese and Japanese art and ornamentation influenced the design and decoration of interiors and gardens in Britain and Ireland. The importation of Chinese and Japanese luxury goods—lacquer, porcelain, embroidered silk, wallpaper, etc.—allowed designers and homeowners to incorporate these objects into their interiors. The East India Companies also commissioned objects from Chinese and Japanese artisans, incorporating European forms and Western patterns.
However, British designers and artisans also created their own fanciful interpretations of Asian styles and forms, often mistaking the original meaning or purpose behind the designs. These Western-created hybrid styles have been known as chinoiserie and japonisme and remain popular in decoration and design. Over the centuries, even as China and Japan became better known to Europeans, the fictional idea of what is ‘oriental’ remained prevalent in Western design.
Emile de Bruijn will explore the impact of Chinese and Japanese material culture on British historic houses and gardens, based on the research he undertook (and the photography that was commissioned) for his new book Borrowed Landscapes. De Bruijn will illustrate how elements of Chinese and Japanese culture were admired but often misunderstood by Western craftsmen. He will also show how resulting designs were both idealized and desired, while dismembered and caricatured. Finally, he will explain how the collection of Asian objects in British and Irish country houses and the use of Asian design elements in Western furniture was not just about appropriation but also reflected admiration and an attempt by designers to appeal to the senses and admiration of the beholder.
Emile de Bruijn studied Japanese at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and museology at Essex University, United Kingdom. After working in the Japanese and Chinese art departments of the auctioneers Sotheby’s, he joined the National Trust where he currently has the role of Assistant National Curator of Decorative Arts. In 2017 he published the monograph Chinese Wallpaper in Britain and Ireland, and his latest book is Borrowed Landscapes: China and Japan in the Historic Houses and Gardens of Britain and Ireland(2023).
The Royal Oak online lecture takes place live on Thursday April 4 at 2 pm Eastern. $25. Register at www.royal-oak.org
Take a virtual journey through the horticultural gem that is Rowallane Garden in Northern Ireland. Carved into the County Down landscape, this 19th-century National Trust garden was created as a space where visitors could leave the world behind and immerse themselves fully in nature. Join Head Gardener Claire McNally through the mix of formal and informal spaces, filled with unique plants from every corner of the globe. Discover the numerous plants that share the Rowallane name, unusual ‘bap stone’ sculptures and a walled garden that was used as a laboratory to experiment with different plantings. You’ll also learn more about how we care for the garden and its historical plant varieties today, keeping them healthy for the future and resilient against the effects of climate change. View on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUWlshNHyxo
This October, you’re invited to join The Royal Oak Foundation on a seven-night voyage around Sicily, Italy’s island paradise featuring a treasure trove of ancient art and history. On this cultural journey of discovery, cruise the Mediterranean’s enchanting waters under the billowing sails of the luxurious Sea Cloud II.
Explore Sicily’s culture, art, history, and public health from fascinating perspectives. Travel with guidance of an exhibition design manager who oversees the displays at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and two professors from Harvard University. Step ashore in towns steeped in ancient history, where the echoes of the Graeco-Roman, Carthaginian, and Byzantine worlds still linger. Explore the breathtaking landscapes of mountains, verdant pastures, and fragrant citrus groves as you delve into the rich cultural heritage of Sicily. Download the brochure HERE.
In 2020, Royal Oak donated $250,000 to preserve one of England’s most magnificent sites which was one of the first places in the UK to become a World Heritage Site in 1986.
Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal Water Garden is an awe-inspiring landscape, owned by the National Trust since 1983. Cistercian monks established the Abbey in 1132, manipulating the River Skell to harness its power for grinding grain into flour. Over time, the Abbey became one of the largest, richest, and most influential Cistercian sites in Britain until the Dissolution in the 1530s by Henry VIII.
In the early 18th century, John Aislabie began transforming his nearby landscape garden of Studley Royal into a picturesque design that incorporated the entire wooded valley, and featured a huge water garden with lakes, grottos, canals, and cascades. Paths were created with viewpoints that centered on classical statues and follies.
In 1767, his son William bought the neighboring Abbey ruins to incorporate them into the landscape and to create the ultimate vista or ‘Surprise View.’ Centuries later, the garden design is much the same, but this important landscape is often flooded from the River Skell. To save the site, the National Trust has partnered with conservation organizations, local farmers, and landowners to implement a natural flood management program.
Justin Scully, the General Manager, will update Royal Oak members on the on-going progress of these efforts, including the planting of woodland and hedgerows, the creation of ponds and meadows to slow the water flow. He will illustrate the changes and explain the challenges faced by the preservation team. Additionally, he will talk about the surviving relics of the Chinese Garden and the wider 18th century and monastic landscape, as well as exciting discoveries in the historic archives. Finally, Justin will update us on how Fountains has responded to the post Covid world. The webinar is free to Royal Oak Society members, $20 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.royal-oak.org/events/spring-2023-lectures-and-tours/fountains-abbey/
This spring join the Royal Oak Foundation for a special garden tour in the Cotswolds. Dream of the English countryside, with gently rolling hills and picture-perfect traditional villages and you may well have a vision of the Cotswolds. Close to London and Oxford, yet still unspoiled, this sought-after area with its gorgeous gardens and royal connections is our destination for spring 2023.
Staying at a luxurious historic inn in the charming village of Broadway, we will be shown famous and influential gardens such as Hidcote, now in the care of the National Trust and neighboring Kiftsgate, with its monumental rambling rose. We will also have special access to a number of secret private gardens where owners have created their own horticultural paradise.
We can compare the design and planting of Tudor knot gardens, cottage gardens, organic gardens and walled gardens and admire features from romantic temples and grottoes to imaginative topiary and striking contemporary sculpture. A crowning highlight, subject to confirmation, will be a visit to Highgrove, the garden of His Majesty The King, a pioneer of organic gardening.
Your tour will be accompanied by art historian and garden lover Rosalind Malandrinos who lives in the Cotswolds and is a guide at Sudeley Castle. For brochure and more information, visit HERE. The sign up deadline is January 27!
