Boston Flora

Tag: The Gardens Trust

  • Monday, December 12, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm – Paradise on Porcelain: In Search of the Picturesque, Online

    The Gardens Trust’s second series exploring how gardens and flowers have influenced and inspired other arts and crafts turns to ceramics. This lustrous material was invented centuries ago in China and has long been regarded as rare, beautiful and highly sought after, and by the 18th Century the secret of making and firing this material had been discovered in Europe. Porcelain provided an ideal background for painted decoration, and botanical designs and landscapes provided a rich source of inspiration. Three of our talks provide a brief chronology of floral images and themes on porcelain from the symbolism of Chinese peonies to the botanical depictions of ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s plants’. We also look at the eighteenth century fashion for illustrating topographical views on ceramics, including the iconic Green Frog Service and the depiction of the circuit created at Hafod, as well as other picturesque views, all of which have provided objects of great beauty, usefulness and prestige, as well as being an invaluable tool for the modern researcher.

    This ticket is for the entire course of 6 sessions. or you may purchase a ticket for individual session, costing £5 via the link HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.

    In the later 18th century, nationalist ideologies encouraged the development of accurate representations of specific places with sublime views, both urban and natural. Edmund Burke, in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756), promoted the emotional impact of the Sublime, evoked by vast, irregular and awe-inspiring landscapes, as in the rugged Derbyshire peaks and expansive moors. This fascination culminated in the cult of the Picturesque and fashionable topographical views and tourist attractions soon appeared on porcelain, often named on the reverse. Beginning with Wedgwood in the 1770s, and continuing in the 1790s at Derby and Worcester, it became the height of fashion for English manufactories to decorate ceramics with British landscapes, often depicting country houses. Many of these images were copied from popular travel books. This talk will concentrate on ceramic examples in the collection of the National Trust from the 1760s through the 1820s.

    Patricia Ferguson is a ceramic historian and curatorial consultant. Patricia has worked for the British Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum, and the National Trust for Scotland, and is a Hon. Adviser on Ceramics to the National Trust. Her publications include Pots, Prints and Politics: Ceramics with an Agenda (British Museum Research Publications, 2021), Garnitures: Vase Sets from National Trust Houses (V&A Publishing, 2016), Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces (National Trust Series, 2016) and numerous articles. Patricia is interested in the history of ceramic display and collecting in Britain, which includes the art of floral display.

    Barr, Flight and Barr flower garniture at Blickling Estate, Norfolk. CMS 353347. Marked on base with a crown above ‘Barr Flight & Barr, Worcester, Flight & Barr, Coventry Street, London. Manufacturers to their Majesties and Royal Family’.

  • Tuesday, November 8, 5:00 am – 6:30 am – Garden Designs Around The French Riviera: Heart and Soul

    On November 8 enjoy the third in the Gardens Trust series on gardens of the French Riviera. This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 4 sessions at a cost of £16 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.

    This lecture takes us from the Impressionist desire to catch light effects with a focus on Renoir at Les Collettes where he saved its ancient olive groves and entertained fellow artists. In direct contrast Beatrice d’Ephrussi represented all Renoir disliked, she dynamited part of Cap Ferrat to create a world of colourful, geometric gardens, hiring and firing a legion of architects and gardeners. The landscape of the Fondation Maeght (below) presents and represents the heart and soul of contemporary art and sculpture, a canvas of light and shade that is at the same time an inspiring setting. If contemporary art serves its purpose it should evoke excitement (or horror) and excite your critical faculties which leads us into the contrasting studio gardens of Arman and Bernar Vernet. The former by invitation and the latter still his atelier and inspiration.

    Caroline Holmes is an experienced and accomplished lecturer working for a wide range of organisations including leading tour and cruise operators. She is an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society and is also a Course Director for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. Her own gardens are open to the public and have featured in many magazine articles and on television in both Britain and Japan. Since the 1990s she has been researching, writing about and lecturing on the Riviera. Caroline is author of 12 books, her latest being Where the wildness pleases – the English garden celebrated (2021).

  • Tuesday, November 1, 5:00 am – 6:30 am – Garden Designs Around the French Riviera: Horticultural Friendships – Lawrence Johnston and Charles de Noailles, Online

    On November 1 enjoy the second in the Gardens Trust series on gardens of the French Riviera. This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 4 sessions at a cost of £16 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.

    Famed for Hidcote Manor, from the 1920s Johnston spent his winters near Menton creating gardens at La Serre de la Madone (below) which he bought in 1924. He experimented with plantings of flower drifts in single colours to contrast with brightly coloured leaved shrubs that he introduced from around the world. Plants from South Africa and China were acclimatised here before being introduced to Hidcote. At its height he employed 12 gardeners for the 7ha of terraces. In 1948 he donated Hidcote Manor to the National Trust and spent his last ten years permanently at La Serre de la Madone. His long-standing friendships included the garden designer Norah Lindsay as well as Charles de Noailles whose Hyères gardens proved too dry, he acquired l’Ermitage de Saint Francois in Grasse, renaming it Villa Noailles. We will explore his plantsman’s garden through the seasons.

    Caroline Holmes is an experienced and accomplished lecturer working for a wide range of organizations including leading tour and cruise operators. She is an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society and is also a Course Director for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. Her own gardens are open to the public and have featured in many magazine articles and on television in both Britain and Japan. Since the 1990s she has been researching, writing about and lecturing on the Riviera. Caroline is author of 12 books, her latest being Where the wildness pleases – the English garden celebrated (2021).

  • Thursday, October 20, 5:00 am – The 19th Century Garden – The Women Who Broke the Glasshouse Ceiling, Online

    The unveiling of a prestigious English Heritage Blue Plaque in the summer of 2022 to commemorate Fanny Rollo Wilkinson (1855-1951) at her central London address, finally threw a spotlight on one of Britain’s earliest pioneers of women’s horticultural education. Wilkinson’s career, as the first female landscape garden designer for, among others, the Metropolitan Public Gardens, Boulevard and Playground Association and the Kyrle Society, and later as head of Swanley Horticultural College, is rightly recognized as helping other women smash the glasshouse ceiling that had previously prevented them from being employed in the gardening world. This talk will look not only at Wilkinson’s life but also at the stories of many of the students she taught and encouraged in the early twentieth century during her time at Swanley as well as the first women to be accepted at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Gardens Trust wraps up its third series on The 19th Century Garden with this lecture by the excellent Catherine Horwood on October 20. The Zoom lecture will be available to view at your leisure for one week following the live presentation. £5 Register at Eventbrite HERE.

    Dr Catherine Horwood is a social historian with a passion for plants. She is an experienced speaker and has published widely including for Gardens Illustrated, The English Garden and the Daily Telegraph. Her biography, Beth Chatto. A life with plants (Pimpernel Press, 2019), was selected as the European Garden Book of the Year in 2020. Other books include Rose (Reaktion, 2018) and Potted History. How Houseplants Took Over Our Homes (Pimpernel Press, 2020). Catherine is also the author of Gardening Women. Their Stories from 1600 to the Present (Virago, 2010), described by The Sunday Times as ‘beautifully constructed and cogently written…Neither gardens nor women will seem quite the same again’.

  • Monday, October 17, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm – The Fabric of Flowers: Gardening with Silk and Gold Thread, Online

    The talk is part of a 6-part Gardens Trust online lecture series, exploring how flowers and gardens have inspired textile artists, begins Mondays at 18:00 BST, equivalent to 2 pm Eastern time. Here in their latest series of talks they are taking a sideways view by exploring how gardens and flowers have influenced and inspired other arts and crafts. This first series of 6 will focus on textiles and explore some of the historical and technical aspects of embroidering, weaving and printing using floral designs on fabric. You will look at textiles from Elizabethan crowns to Edwardian table linen to see how flowers provided inspiration, taking in the prolific art embroiderers of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Then you will be brought bang up to date with two contemporary embroiderers with very different approaches to floral imagery who will share their design processes with us.

    The development of the English cottage garden in the hands of the Irish horticulturalist and journalist William Robinson (1838-1935) had a marked effect on the textile arts during the final decades of the nineteenth century. His revolutionary approach was reflected in the choice of botanical imagery featured in the work of many Arts and Crafts designers, including two of the leading exponents of art embroidery: Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) and May Morris (1862-1938).

    Jekyll’s reputation as an artist and craftswoman has been eclipsed by her contribution to garden history. Few of her admirers today are aware that her skills as an interior designer were much sought after by the Victorian elite. In 1874, she was commissioned by the Royal School of Needlework to design a suite of sixteen wall hangings, twelve of which have recently come to light, for the great drawing room at Eaton Hall in Cheshire, home of the Duke of Westminster (1825-1899). Jekyll’s elaborate, floriated pattern reveals her indebtedness to the designer Christopher Dresser (1834-1904), with whom she studied botanical drawing and ornament at the National Art Training School in South Kensington.

    A constant theme in the work of May Morris is her love of English meadow plants and cottage garden flowers. Throughout her life, she made detailed studies of plant life to familiarize herself ‘with all the possible peculiarities and diversities of such things.’ But like many other writers on art embroidery, she recognized that the designer’s work ‘should merely recall nature, not absolutely copy it’ (Decorative Needlework, 1893). Morris’s approach to conventional design will be examined through her work for the embroidery department at Morris & Co. and her special commissions and gifts for family and friends.

    This ticket (purchase HERE) 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 6 sessions at a cost of £24 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.

    Former Archivist at the Royal School of Needlework, Dr Lynn Hulse is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London. She is also co-founder of Ornamental Embroidery, which specialises in the teaching and designing of historic hand stitch through workshops in museums, art galleries and historic houses across the UK. Recent exhibitions include The Needle’s Excellency: contemporary raised work at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2017) and the Knitting and Stitching Show (2018), and The Needle’s Art: contemporary hand embroidery inspired by an early Tudor pattern book at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (2021-2022). Lynn has published widely on the development of art embroidery and is the editor of May Morris: Art and Life (2017), long listed for the 2018 William M. B. Berger prize in British Art History, and The Needle’s Excellency: English raised embroidery (2108). She is currently completing a book on Lady Victoria Welby and the founding of the Royal School of Needlework, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year.

  • Thursday, October 13, 5:00 am – The 19th Century Garden – Painting the Victorian Garden, Online

    The fifth in a series of six online lectures from The Gardens Trust brings David Marsh back on October 13 to discuss Painting the Victorian Garden.

    The Victorian Age saw gardens emerge as a major artistic subject in their own right, perhaps hand in hand with the spread of interest in garden-making. A small number of artists even specialized in recording by their own choice not just the gardens of the rich on commission but much more ordinary gardens. This lecture will look at a range of painters and paintings who after decades of neglect are beginning to be recognized as significant figures in both art and garden history. We shall, in the words of Roy Strong, go ‘sauntering past immemorial yew hedges to linger over a herbaceous border before ascending ancient stone steps leading through a weathered iron gate to who knows where’. But we’ll also look inside the conservatory and at the reality behind the chocolate box cottage garden.

    After a career as a head teacher in Inner London, Dr David Marsh took very early retirement (the best thing he ever did) and returned to education on his own account. He was awarded a PhD in 2005 and now lectures about garden history anywhere that will listen to him. Recently appointed an honorary Senior Research Fellow by the University of Buckingham, he is a trustee of the Gardens Trust and chairs their Education Committee. He oversees their on-line program and writes a weekly garden history blog which you can find at https://thegardenstrust.blog. £5 each or all 6 for £30. Register on Eventbrite HERE.

  • Tuesdays, June 7 & June 14, 5:00 am (but recording link sent for later viewing) – Virgil and the Bees, Online

    Since time began bees have enchanted and perplexed human beings. From Mesopotamia to Mexico bees have figured in the ritual and mythology of the world’s most vibrant cultures. Egyptian Pharoahs, Renaissance popes and nineteenth century emperors have all chosen the modest insect as their emblem, while the hive itself has been seen as a model of everything from the ideal democracy to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, to the perfect urban dwellings. In ancient times bees supported mankind from birth to death; honey served as a tax, an offering, a propitiation and a libation, it was daubed on the lips of newborns and preserved corpses after death. Predating both bread and wine it was man’s first sweetener and first intoxicant. Being both antiseptic and antibacterial it was also essential in medicine, cosmetics, preservation and contraception. Virgil and the Bees will look at the social history of beekeeping, exploring the myths and misconceptions, the products of the hive and the history of the apiary. Katie Campbell will present these talks for The Gardens Trust, and the cost is £5 each or 2 for £8. through Eventbrite. Details for registration are 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.

    The June 7 talk is entitled The Song of Increase. As apian life has intrigued human observers, it has also challenged human classification. Some cultures believed bees rose from the ground, others that they fell from the sky; some saw them as the souls of the dead, others thought them the tears of the gods; Greek philosophers thought they were propagated by beating the corpse of a bull, Roman lawyers argued whether bees were tame or wild to determine the responsibility for, and ownership of, bee swarms. Some believed honey grew on trees, others thought it rained from the heavens, even today most Jains and many vegans refuse to consume honey which they deem an animal product. The Song of Increase will explore the rich symbolism attached to bees and investigate the major misconceptions around these mysterious creatures.

    The lecture on June 14 is The Celestial Gift. he history of beekeeping is the history of honey harvest; from the first courageous souls who braved rock faces to steal from wild colonies, through the apiarists who burnt whole colonies to get at the honey; from to the benign clerics who devised hives which enable the humane extraction of honey, to today’s industrial producers who confine colonies in vast warehouses where the bees never see a live flower. This lecture will survey the changing theory and practice of beekeeping and the different uses of honey and hive, from the ancient custom of mellification to the modern ‘mad honey’ which sells illegally on the dark web, from the Celtic tribesmen who tortured enemies by smearing their naked bodies with honey to the Roman legions which created chaos by tossing live hives into enemy camps.

    Katie Campbell is a writer and garden historian. She lectures widely, has taught at Birkbeck, Bristol and Buckingham universities; she writes for various publications and leads art and garden tours. Her recently published Cultivating the Renaissance (Routledge, 2022) examines how the Medici’s Tuscan villas reflect the changing ideas of the Renaissance. Earlier books include British Gardens in Time, to accompany the BBC television series; Paradise of Exiles, which explores the Anglo- American garden-makers in late nineteenth century Florence; Policies and Pleasances: A Guide to Scotland’s Gardens, and Icons of Twentieth Century Landscape Design. She is currently working on ‘Virgil and the Bees’, a social history of beekeeping.

  • Monday, May 30, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm – Why the Rose, Online

    This talk is the final lecture in a series sponsored by The Gardens Trust in association with the Historic Rose Group. £5. 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 for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    I ask the rose, ‘From whom did you steal that beauty?’ The rose laughs softly out of shame, but how should she tell? Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi.

    In this talk, writer and horticultural historian Jennifer Potter sets out to answer the question posed by the Persian poet, mystic and scholar, Rumi, more than seven centuries ago. What makes the rose so special to so many cultures around the world? How to explain its transformation from a simple briar of the northern hemisphere into the western world’s favorite flower? Ranging widely across cultures and art forms, the talk tracks the rose’s shifting associations with love, sex, death and the great religions of East and West, overturning along the way many cherished rose myths.

    When first approached by her publishers to write a book about the rose, Jennifer Potter secretly wondered if we really needed another book on the rose. Quickly hooked by this most potent of flowers, she spent the next five years researching and writing The Rose, A True History (Atlantic Books, 2010), embarking on a journey that took her from the rose fields of Iran to the White House Rose Garden. The author of four novels and six works of non-fiction, she wrote a celebrated biography of the John Tradescants: Strange Blooms, The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants (Atlantic Books, 2006), and followed her book on the rose with Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World (Atlantic Books, 2013), which has been translated into Chinese.

  • Wednesday, May 18, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm – Unforgettable Gardens: Edibles and the World Food Garden, Online

    The Gardens Trust is delighted to partner once again with London Gardens Trust, this time to look at some slightly more unusual Unforgettable Gardens which highlight the value of gardening with all the senses. This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5, through Eventbrite by clicking 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 one week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    Paul Kettel invites you to join him for a taster tour of the RHS’s new World Food Garden – where you can immerse yourself in a palette of edible delights. The Garden, which opened in 2021 is already proving to be very popular with garden visitors. It demonstrates the cultivation of new and unusual vegetables, fruit, flowers and herbs, some of them exotic that will inspire the amateur gardener to grow at home. Paul will explore new tastes that can be found in the produce grown in the World Garden as some may become more commonly grown.

    Paul Kettell, formerly the Royal Horticultural Society’s School’s Development Officer, is now the Edibles Team Leader at the RHS Garden Wisley in charge of the new World Food Garden.

    Copyright: Oliver Dixon/RHS

  • Tuesday, May 10, 5:00 am – Forgotten Women Gardeners – Edith Lady Londonderry, Online

    Neil Porteus and The Gardens Trust will discuss Circe’s Garden, Edith, Lady Londonderry’s Garden at Mount Stewart, on May 10 at 5 am (recording link sent following the talk, good for a week to view at your leisure.)

    Visionary garden designer, suffragist and society hostess, Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Lady Londonderry, created one of the most original gardens of the 20th century at Mount Stewart, in County Down, Northern Ireland. After the First World War and in her 40s, Edith channeled her energies into the garden, filling it with rich symbolism inspired by her Celtic upbringing and Greek myths. She amassed an unrivalled collection of rare and tender plants, taking advantage of the mild climate of Strangford Lough and experimented with bold planting schemes. She even famously turned down Gertrude Jekyll’s proposals for the garden in favour of her own. The talk will have new research and information on what is one of the most enchanting gardens in the world.

    Neil Porteus has been a head gardener since 1990, he took a voluntary redundancy from the National Trust in December 2020 and works as a garden consultant in Ireland and Northern Ireland. He also propagates a lot of plants from home which are hard to come by now in the horticultural trade. Neil has a BSc Hons in Horticulture and an MA in Garden History.

    £5 – Register through Eventbrite by clicking HERE.

    EDITH, MARCHIONESS OF LONDONDERRY, by Philip de Laszlo (1869-1937), in Lady Londonderry’s Sitting Room at Mount Stewart House, Co. Down, Northern Ireland. (MST/P/2445)