Boston Flora

Tag: Standen

  • Thursday, March 30, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Standen and the Beales: an Expression of Arts and Crafts, Online

    Standen’s garden was created around the house designed by Philip Webb for the Beale family in 1894. Webb laid out the garden in keeping with the arts and crafts ethos of the house, but the planting reflects the middle-class artistic taste of Margaret Beale, an amateur gardener who recorded her successes and failures over nearly fifty years in her garden diary. This March 30 Sussex Gardens Trust talk will examine the origins of the garden and its development in the context of arts and crafts principles, and will consider the recent restoration of the garden by the National Trust.

    Dr Caroline Ikin is a Curator at the National Trust with a specialism in garden history. She has previously worked in museums and for the Gardens Trust and her research interest is in nineteenth century art, architecture and gardens. Caroline is author of The Victorian Garden (Shire, 2012), The Victorian Gardener (Shire, 2014), The Kitchen Garden (Amberley, 2017), and is currently working on a new survey of Victorian gardens to be published by Bloomsbury and the National Trust. Caroline has written for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Garden History, the National Trust Cultural Heritage Magazine, Museums Journal and various other publications, and was awarded the Mavis Batey Essay Prize in 2022. She has lectured widely, including for the Gardens Trust, V&A, Watts Gallery, Sussex Gardens Trust, Oxford University, and Furniture History Society, as well as presenting conference papers. Her PhD thesis, titled ‘Reading Ruskin in the Garden: the designed landscape at Brantwood 1871-1900’, explored John Ruskin’s garden through the lens of his late published works.

    The lecture will be presented on Zoom. Registrants will receive a Zoom link ahead of the lecture, and a recording will be available for one week following the talk. £5.00 Register HERE.

  • Thursday, November 12, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm – Gardens of the Arts & Crafts Movement, Online

    Thursday, November 12, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm – Gardens of the Arts & Crafts Movement, Online

    Join the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, New England, on November 12 at 11 am for a Zoom webinar with Judith B. Tankard on Gardens of the Arts & Crafts Movement. Free with registration HERE.

    English gardens from the Arts & Crafts era are jewels of early 20th Century design. Part of the same design movement that flourished in Europe and North America between 1880 and 1920, these gardens emphasized medieval and romantic styles. Designed on an intimate scale, they blurred the distinction between indoors and outdoors, and emphasized the symbiotic nature of the house and garden as a unified landscape. Many contained a series of distinct outdoor ‘rooms’ often delineated by hedges and embellished with whimsical topiary. Most had lavish plantings of perennials, ornamental shrubs, bulbs, and annuals—all massed for color, textural effect, and seasonal impact. Small structures, such as pergolas, arbors, sundials, and other traditional ornaments produced storybook-like gardens that referenced Old English manor house surroundings of the 17th Century.


    In this illustrated lecture, Judith Tankard will give insight into the minds of the movement’s creative giants such as William Morris and Gertrude Jekyll, as well as lesser known designers such as Avray Tipping, Thomas Mawson, and Robert Lorimer. She will illustrate gorgeous National Trust gardens such as Hidcote, Standen, Snowshill Manor, Red House, and Kellie Castle, among others, and give visual tours of other stunning gardens, such as Hestercombe, Great Dixter, Gravetye Manor, and Munstead Wood. Tankard will show how these English models created a lasting impact on gardens across the pond, as American designers took inspiration from their British contemporaries.


    Judith B Tankard is a landscape historian, award-winning author, and preservation consultant. She is the author of 10 illustrated books, including Ellen Shipman and the American Garden, winner of the 2019 J. B. Jackson Book Award. Her book, Beatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes, was named an Honor Book for the 2010 Historic New England Book Prize. She taught at the Landscape Institute of Harvard University for twenty years. Judith is a Garden Conservancy Fellow, a Heritage Circle member of The Royal Oak Foundation, and a Stewardship Council member of The Cultural Landscape Foundation. She lives in Boston, is a member of The Garden Club of the Back Bay, and gardens on Martha’s Vineyard. www.judithtankard.com

    For information on other upcoming ICAA New England Chapter tours and lectures, please visit: www.classicist-ne.org/calendar