Boston Flora

Tag: The Gardens Trust

  • Wednesday, May 27, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – A Loudon Celebration – In Conversation with the Loudons, Online

    The last in The Gardens Trust’s online course celebrating the bicentenary of The Gardener’s Magazine takes place May 27 at 5 am Eastern. Register 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 (available until 10 June) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    It was exactly two hundred years ago that John Claudius Loudon (1782-1843) started publishing The Gardener’s Magazine, the first periodical devoted solely to horticulture. As Loudon described it, the aims of the magazine were ‘to disseminate new and important information on all topics connected with horticulture, and to raise the intellect and the character of those engaged in this art.’

    In celebration of this bicentenary, the Gardens Trust is hosting a six-part online series that explores the ideas and inventions of this extraordinary Scottish writer and designer, and his equally industrious and radical wife, Jane (?1807-1858). Jane has her own centenary celebrations this year: her novel The Mummy! is set exactly 100 years in the future, in 2126.

    Between them, the Loudons were the driving force behind the rise of the amateur middle class gardener, and also the real professionalism of the 19th century head gardener. Their story is fascinating and will make you realise how much we owe to their non-stop work ethic and enthusiasm.

    The final session of the series will bring together two experts on the Loudons and the nineteenth-century garden for what promises to be a fascinating discussion. They will debate the distinctive contributions and importance of the Loudons, their legacies viewed from a twenty-first century perspective and take questions and comments from the audience.

    Dr Brent Elliott was formerly the Librarian of the Royal Horticultural Society. For 21 years he was a member of the Historic Parks and Gardens Advisory Committee of what was then English Heritage and has been a member of the Victorian Society’s Buildings Committee for over 45 years. He was also a former editor of Garden History. He is the author of Victorian Gardens (Batsford, 1986) and of various subsequent works on garden history. His book The British Cemetery, co-authored with Roger Bowdler, will be published in April.

    Dr Sarah Dewis is the author of The Loudons and the Gardening Press (Routledge, 2014). She completed her doctorate at Birkbeck University of London. She contributed to The Lure of Illustration in Nineteenth Century Picture and Press (Palgrave and Macmillan, 2009) and to the Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland (Academia Press, 2009). With Brent Elliott she co-edited the six-volume collection, Nineteenth-Century Gardens and Gardening (Routledge, 2024).

  • Wednesday, May 6, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – A Loudon Celebration: Jane Loudon and The Gardener’s Magazine, Online

    The third in The Gardens Trust online course celebrating the bicentenary of The Gardener’s Magazine takes place May 6 at 1 pm Eastern.

    It was exactly two hundred years ago that John Claudius Loudon (1782-1843) started publishing The Gardener’s Magazine, the first periodical devoted solely to horticulture. As Loudon described it, the aims of the magazine were ‘to disseminate new and important information on all topics connected with horticulture, and to raise the intellect and the character of those engaged in this art.’

    In celebration of this bicentenary, the Gardens Trust is hosting a six-part online series that explores the ideas and inventions of this extraordinary Scottish writer and designer, and his equally industrious and radical wife, Jane (?1807-1858). Jane has her own centenary celebrations this year: her novel The Mummy! is set exactly 100 years in the future, in 2126. The career of Jane Webb Loudon is all too often overshadowed by that of her husband, leaving the impression that she did indeed owe him as she said “all the knowledge of the subject she possesses”. But research reveals that she played an important role in the production of The Gardener’s Magazine (with her contributions appearing under the initials ‘J.W.L’ shortly after her marriage to John in 1830) and that it influenced her own short-lived Ladies’ Magazine of Gardening. An examination of her key publications helps us understand her legacy as knowledgeable botanist, best-selling gardening writer and ground-breaking magazine editor, including the role she played in influencing, championing and challenging women’s roles within the garden, the home and wider society.

    Dr Rachel Savage’s interest in garden history started over fifteen years ago whilst working as Head of Marketing for the RHS. Since then she has completed qualifications in horticulture, garden design, an MA in Landscape History at UEA and a PhD exploring house and garden design and the gendering of space in the nineteenth century. A trustee for the Gardens Trust, she has also contributed to Norfolk Garden Trust’s publications on Capability Brown and Humphry Repton.

    Between them, the Loudons were the driving force behind the rise of the amateur middle class gardener, and also the real professionalism of the 19th century head gardener. Their story is fascinating and will make you realise how much we owe to their non-stop work ethic and enthusiasm.

    Series tickets are being offered at the special celebratory sum of £21 for all six sessions, a 50% reduction on our usual ticket price for a six-part series. The ticket for this session may be purchased through Eventbrite HERE

  • Tuesday, March 10, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – The Uprooted Empire: Epiphytes, Greenhouses and Hybrids in 19th Century England, Online

    Stories of horticulture and garden-making are often bound up with stories of empires. From the global trade in plants and the economic imperative behind botanic gardens to the acquired status and symbolism of certain plants and the realities of human exploitation, this series will explore the myriad ways in which economic and political power has influenced the seemingly commonplace activities of gardeners.

    This January 8-part online series from The Gardens Trust picks up themes and ideas from the Gardens and Empires conference presented in June 2025 by English Heritage and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in association with the British Library. Some of the speakers from the conference will be expanding on the topics they presented, and additional researchers have been invited to share their perspectives. The series will focus on European empires and will examine their global impact and influence on plants and gardening. We will explore issues from the perspective of both the coloniser and the colonized, of individuals and institutions, of the past and continuing legacies today – and will see both the triumphs and cruelties inherent in the stories around empires, plants and gardening.

    This ticket link is for the series of 8 talks at £56 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 8 for £42). There will be an opportunity for Q & A after each session. Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks.

    The final talk of the series will be held March 10. The expansion of the British Empire into tropical regions during the 19th century introduced previously unseen plants (often labelled as ‘exotic’) into everyday life in the United Kingdom. This talk focuses on epiphytes – plants that grow on other plants – and argues that they were not passive objects but active agents in their transport, acclimatization, and transformation beyond their natural range. Their striking visual features, such as showy flowers, turned them into desirable tropical commodities, while their minimal dependence on soil increased survival during oceanic transit. Once in Britain, epiphytes such as orchids and anthuriums drove innovations in greenhouse technology, enabling the recreation of diverse tropical climates despite the UK’s relatively harsh weather. Furthermore, their natural tendency to hybridise allowed horticulturists to interbreed species from different regions, creating artificial diversity that had never existed in nature. By examining the plants’ agency of epiphytes and their interplay with technology, this talk offers a fresh perspective on ornamental plant introduction in Victorian England.

    Diego Molina is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Geohumanities Research Group at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Initially trained as a botanist, his latest research addresses the historically built interaction between people and plants in biodiverse cities. On this topic he has published various papers in journals such as Environmental History and Economic Botany. Additionally, he has just published his third monograph, Planting a City in the Tropical Andes (Routledge, 2024). Prior to his current fellowship, he was a Rachel Carson Fellow in Munich.

    This session will be chaired by Dr Caroline Cornish of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

    Image: John Atkinson Grimshaw, Il Penseroso, oil on canvas, 1875, (detail), Wikimedia commons, public domain

  • Tuesday, March 3, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern – Legacies of Empire: The Royal Horticultural Society’s Plant Collector Archive, Online

    Stories of horticulture and garden-making are often bound up with stories of empires. From the global trade in plants and the economic imperative behind botanic gardens to the acquired status and symbolism of certain plants and the realities of human exploitation, this series will explore the myriad ways in which economic and political power has influenced the seemingly commonplace activities of gardeners.

    This January 8-part online series from The Gardens Trust picks up themes and ideas from the Gardens and Empires conference presented in June 2025 by English Heritage and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in association with the British Library. Some of the speakers from the conference will be expanding on the topics they presented, and additional researchers have been invited to share their perspectives. The series will focus on European empires and will examine their global impact and influence on plants and gardening. We will explore issues from the perspective of both the coloniser and the colonized, of individuals and institutions, of the past and continuing legacies today – and will see both the triumphs and cruelties inherent in the stories around empires, plants and gardening.

    This ticket link is for the series of 8 talks at £56 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 8 for £42). There will be an opportunity for Q & A after each session. Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks.

    The seventh talk takes place March 3. One of the proudest legacies of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is its role in broadening the range of plants grown in British gardens. However this is a history interwoven with British colonial expansion and exploitation, a fact that has not been fully acknowledged in past discussion or interpretation. Over the last 5 years, RHS Lindley Library has been working with archival papers relating to the Society’s most active period of plant collecting in the early 19th century. As part of this work, the RHS commissioned an external review of the papers from Drs Sarah Easterby-Smith and Elena Romero-Passerin (School of History, University of St Andrews). This talk will look at the insights gained from this work and how we can invite new perspectives on the archive, for instance drawing on other disciplines like ethnobotany, to develop a more inclusive understanding of the factors that shaped our gardens and gardening.

    Fiona Davison is RHS Head of Libraries and Exhibitions based at the RHS Lindley Library in London. She has a background in museum curatorship and management. She has written two books on 19th- and 20th-century garden history: The Hidden Horticulturists (Atlantic Books, 2019) and An Almost Impossible Thing (Little Toller, 2023). She gives talks and lectures about the RHS collections and the history of gardening.

    Dr Sarah Easterby-Smith is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of St Andrews. She researches and teaches the social and cultural history of science in the 18th and 19th centuries; in 2017 she published Cultivating Commerce: Cultures of Botany in Britain and France 1760-1815 (Cambridge University Press). Alongside her university work, she has acted as historical consultant for the Royal Horticultural Society and, currently, is working for UNESCO on a project about botany and world heritage sites.

    This session will be chaired by Dr Louise Crawley of English Heritage.

  • Wednesday, December 13, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – The Ornamental Wilderness in the English Garden, Online

    While today we may think of a wilderness as a wild place unspoiled by human intervention, in the 17th and 18th centuries a garden wilderness referred to a highly cultivated part of the formal garden, a place bounded by trees or tall hedges with paths to walk on and with occasional cultural delights within—statues or fountains or a summer house in the classical style. In its mature form, the wilderness constituted most of the garden and the setting in which all other features were placed. The wilderness was shady and private, a place for solitary retreat as well as social activity, an ‘artinatural’ space in which artifice and culture combined with nature. This illustrated online talk with The Gardens Trust on December 13 examines the history and development of the English garden wilderness and takes a new look at this period of garden history through the perspective of the wilderness garden.

    James Bartos is the author of The Ornamental Wilderness in the English Garden (Unicorn, 2022) and has published in the journals Garden History and Die Gartenkunst. From 2015 to 2020 he was the first Chairman of the Gardens Trust, having previously served on the Council of the Garden History Society. He was awarded a PhD in Garden History from Bristol University in 2014. Over the past twenty-five years, he has created a new garden in Dorset.

    The talk will be introduced by Peter Hughes KC, the chair of the Gardens Trust.

    A recording of the talk will be available to ticket holders to enjoy throughout the Christmas period.

    Ticket price £5, Gardens Trust members may use their promo code for an additional 10% discount.

    Optional Ticket price £10 to include £5 donation to help us fund our work protecting historic green spaces. To register visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-ornamental-wilderness-in-the-english-garden-tickets-748729880227

    Ticket sales close 4 hours before the event. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the talk (If you do not receive this link please contact The Gardens Trust), and a link to the recorded session, available until the end of December, will be sent shortly afterwards.

  • Wednesday, October 25, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Head Gardeners at Historic Sites: Sheila Das at RHS Wisley

    The Gardens Trust Wednesday webinar series this Autumn will focus on head gardeners working at historic sites. This is the first lecture of the second set of five 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. Learn about the challenges they face, including climate change, as well as the joys of horticulture and heritage. you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £20 via the link 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 (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    On October 25, join Sheila Das. RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey is the flagship of the Royal Horticultural Society, as well as its oldest and most horticulturally diverse garden. It is also one of the UK’s most visited gardens, attracting about around 1.4 million visitors each year. The gardens are maintained by a team of around 70 permanent staff and a cohort of 33 school of horticulture learners on practical training programs in the garden. The team is supported by over 100 garden volunteers. The garden has expanded hugely to its current size of 185 acres since it was gifted to the Society in 1903. From the start, Wisley has always been about Plantsmanship and experimentation, and it has continued to evolve in accordance with the Society’s needs and in response to the changing environment. RHS Hilltop – the Home of Gardening Science is the newest addition to the site, opened in 2021, alongside three new gardens, a new Welcome building and continued investment into beautiful planting.

    Having changed career in 2006, Sheila Das completed the Kew Diploma and then went on to work for English Heritage at Wrest Park. She is now a Garden Manager at RHS Garden Wisley with responsibility for the garden’s practical training programs, the Members’ Seed Scheme and the Edibles and Wellbeing gardens. Alongside her focus on horticultural education, Sheila has a keen interest in sustainable gardening particularly with relevance to growing food.

  • Wednesday, May 3, 2:00 pm Eastern – A Celebration of Play in the Landscape: Follies

    This Gardens Trust online series of four lectures considers aspects of play and playfulness within the landscape and garden. For children, play is the life’s work. We all want to discover what’s new and explore what’s out of sight. We should never lose this sense of revelry. Families that play together come away walking tall and feeling better about themselves and each other. In the spirit, let us celebrate the importance and life-affirming joy of play. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week. This ticket link is for this May 3 individual session on Follies and costs £5: www.thegardenstrust.org

    Follies are structures, buildings, towers, underground chambers or astonishing creations that are ‘utterly useless’, in the sense of having no practical use. If they have a practical function, strictly speaking they are not follies. Some are classically elegant, others completely bizarre. They uphold uncompromising beauty and, on their own terms, perfection.

    These wondrous constructions invite our imaginations to soar. They are sophisticated acts of defiance against a world of harsh reality and mindless speed. Follies provide a timeless oasis, a leisurely paradise, and the substance of a dream.

    Adrian Fisher MBE is the world’s leading creator of mazes of all kinds, full of challenges, discovery and fun. For 44 years he has been transforming the traditional art of getting lost into state-of-the-art adventures, each with a compelling narrative and storyline. He and his wife Marie live in the village of the Durweston in Dorset. Their garden contains his GEOMITICA art, and a hedge maze with a folly tower, mirrored chamber, spiral staircase and battlements.

    He is the author of a whole shelf of books about mazes while his website www.mazemaker explains much more about his work.

  • Tuesday, March 28, 6:00 am – 7:30 am (but recorded) – Garden Technology: What Made Our Garden Grow? A History of Poo, Online

    This is the last lecture in a six-week series of lectures which will look at the history and development of garden technology from Medieval times right up to the present day. The ‘technology’ of gardening has developed enormously over the past centuries due to mechanization, automation, advances in science – and we can now grow plants without soil, we have automated watering systems for our greenhouses and we can watch while the robot mower, controlled from our smartphones, trims our lawns to perfection. But although we may approach them differently, the tasks and challenges that face gardeners today are much the same as they were back in Tudor times and earlier: preparing the soil, planting, protecting, composting, propagating and so on and so on. The rise in the organic movement over the past few decades has reminded us that the gardeners of old knew at least as much about gardening and working in harmony with nature as we do now, so how have new technologies developed and progressed our gardening knowledge, practice, and techniques?

    The Gardens Trust has engaged a series of expert speakers to examine this question, including the renowned garden writer and designer, Noel Kingsbury, National Trust curator James Rothwell, expert on lawnmowers through the ages Keith Wootton, as well as regular Gardens Trust lecturers Jill Francis and our very own David Marsh; who will take a different technology in turn – tools, fertilizers, pest control, glasshouses, lawnmowers and plant breeding – and explore their history and development in relation to gardening. Tickets £24 or £5 each. Register 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 (If you do not receive this link please contact them). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.

    On March 28, David Marsh will expound on A History of Poo. David Marsh is one of my favorite presenters, and the talk is sure to be a delight. As he writes:

    “If you asked me to think of a title that would turn most people off buying a ticket for a lecture I’d guess the History of Fertilizer would be near the top of the list… but be prepared to be surprised. It isn’t as boring as it sounds, and in fact there’s are laughs and gasps a-plenty as we explore the smelly, messy and often unpleasant story of what made your garden grow- from dinosaurs to Victorian plutocrats, from cholera to fossil fir-cones and from Thames barges to the collapse of the Spanish Empire, via with words of wisdom from Samuel Pepys, Shirley Hibberd and Humphry Davy. In fact, so sure am I that you won’t find hearing about recycled excrement and superphosphates dull that you can have your money back if I can’t convince you that it isn’t!”

    David Marsh is a garden historian, lecturer and writer. He obtained a PhD in Garden History from Birkbeck College in 2005. Since 2011 he has been co-convener of the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, London University. He leads the Gardens Trust’s team who organize online courses and lectures, and also writes the Gardens Trust’s weekly blog.

  • Tuesday, February 28, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Garden Technology: Plant Breeding, A Short History, Online

    This is the second lecture in a six-week series of lectures which will look at the history and development of garden technology from Medieval times right up to the present day. The ‘technology’ of gardening has developed enormously over the past centuries due to mechanization, automation, advances in science – and we can now grow plants without soil, we have automated watering systems for our greenhouses and we can watch while the robot mower, controlled from our smartphones, trims our lawns to perfection. But although we may approach them differently, the tasks and challenges that face gardeners today are much the same as they were back in Tudor times and earlier: preparing the soil, planting, protecting, composting, propagating and so on and so on. The rise in the organic movement over the past few decades has reminded us that the gardeners of old knew at least as much about gardening and working in harmony with nature as we do now, so how have new technologies developed and progressed our gardening knowledge, practice, and techniques?

    The Gardens Trust has engaged a series of expert speakers to examine this question, including the renowned garden writer and designer, Noel Kingsbury, National Trust curator James Rothwell, expert on lawnmowers through the ages Keith Wootton, as well as regular Gardens Trust lecturers Jill Francis and our very own David Marsh; who will take a different technology in turn – tools, fertilizers, pest control, glasshouses, lawnmowers and plant breeding – and explore their history and development in relation to gardening.

    Speaker Noel Kingsbury will cover Plant Breeding on February 28. We owe our survival to plant breeding, the ability to produce productive, disease-resistant and resilient crops. This presentation outlines the basics of how we learnt the basics of plant genetics and applied them to the crops that feed us, along the way producing vast numbers of new varieties for our gardens. Although focused on edible crops, we’ll be introduced to some of the key breeders of ornamental garden plants: their plants and their methods. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week. Tickets £24 or £5 each through Eventbrite. Register HERE.

    Noel Kingsbury is best-known as a writer on gardens, plants and especially as a promotor of ecological planting design. Along the way he has written about garden plant history and developed unfashionable thoughts about how we feed ourselves, including Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding (University of Chicago Press, 2009).

  • Monday, December 19, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm – Paradise on Porcelain: The Derby Hafod Service, Online

    On his estate of Hafod Uchtryd in Cardiganshire, Thomas Johnes (1748-1816) created not only the most elaborate house ever built in the county, but also developed around it one of the most ambitious and influential picturesque landscapes ever created. At Hafod, Johnes developed an important art collection and library, pioneered agricultural improvements and planted millions of trees. Here, according to Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick in 1808, ‘art and nature have combined to produce the most astonishing place in the principality.’ This Gardens Trust online talk on December 19 at 2 pm gives an overview of the Hafod estate, its history and its place in the picturesque movement, with a focus on the lavish Derby porcelain dessert service commissioned by Johnes in 1787 as a record and celebration of his achievements there. Using the surviving elements of the Derby service as a tour guide, the talk also illustrates the pleasurable and often dramatic experience of exploring the walking routes that Johnes created through the wild landscape of the upper reaches of the river Ystwyth.

    Andrew Renton has worked in the Art department at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales since July 1999, first as Head of Applied Art, then as Keeper of Art 2015-2021, before recently taking on the new role of Head of Design Collections. Prior to that, he was a curator of applied art at National Museums Liverpool. His curatorial interests are wide-ranging, but at Cardiff he has focused in particular on modern and contemporary applied art, and on historic silver and Welsh ceramics. He was lead curator of the Museum’s exhibition of Japanese art and design in 2018, Kizuna: Japan | Wales | Design.

    This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5 – register through Eventbrite HERE.