Boston Flora

Tag: Yorkshire Gardens Trust

  • Wednesday, October 8, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Yorkshire’s Designed Landscapes: Bolton Abbey

    Bound by high moorland, the wooded valley of the river Wharfe at Bolton Abbey has been a popular beauty spot for over two centuries. The place began to attract visitors once the Reverend William Carr opened up Bolton Woods as a landscape garden, during the 1790s, by introducing paths interspersed with seats that offer a series of surprise views. Hackfall, on the river Ure, was the notable Yorkshire precedent. The seats were named to invoke the landowning dynasties, and were placed to reveal views of natural spectacle, such as The Strid and High Strid, as well as the historical ruins that framed this stretch of river: Bolton Priory and Barden Tower. The Yorkshire Gardens Trust online talk will focus on the representation of the place by artists and authors. In his History of Craven (1805), Dr Whitaker hailed Bolton Abbey as a Picturesque tour de force that combined natural splendour with historical associations, as did the numerous guidebooks that followed. The artist, J.M.W. Turner, and poet, William Wordsworth, made several visits, inspired both by the place and by the financial benefits of the tourist market. Wordsworth’s poetry dramatized the history of the ruined priory and the mortal hazards of The Strid. Turner’s watercolors were engraved for poetic and topographical publications. Unbeknown to most visitors today, Bolton Abbey remains a Picturesque landscape garden.

    Dr Patrick Eyres is editor and publisher of the unique New Arcadian Journal, in which artists and writers explore the landscape garden. The current, 56th, is the penultimate edition. On behalf of The Gardens Trust, he set up the annual New Research Symposium and chaired it for the first ten years. 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 will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks

    This ticket is costs £8, and you may purchase this October 8 session through Eventbrite HERE.

  • Wednesday, September 17, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Yorkshire’s Designed Landscapes: The Role of Town Memorials, Online

    Memorialization is a fascinating topic. Several theories exist around how and why we memorialize in the ways that we do, and how processes of remembering and forgetting occur in competition but also relate to and condition one another. Furthermore, different opinions have developed around how these processes come to inform the ways that we understand our identities and sense of place. This Yorkshire Gardens Trust online talk on September 17 will explore how different theories surrounding memorialization can enable us to understand what people think the roles of memorials are in Barnsley. The focus of the talk will be on Barnsley’s coal mining and war history, and the ways that memorials can either successfully or unsuccessfully convey messages about the past and therefore inform people’s understandings of the past and their place in the present.

    John Land is a final year PhD student in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield. His thesis explores the roles that memorials have for people in post-industrial communities and how landscapes of memory can be both sites of competing ideas and sites at which identity and a sense of place are molded. His specific interest is in Barnsley’s memorial landscapes, and the ways in which coal mining heritage is memorialized in very different ways to the town’s First and Second World War heritage. The different ways these pasts are memorialized can tell us more about how and why some pasts maintain relevance across time and how certain pasts come to inform identity. This individual session costs £8, and you may purchase it via 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 will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks .

  • Wednesday, March 20, 1:00 pm Eastern – Bright Prospects: Curating & Conservation at Wentworth Castle Gardens & Beninbrough Hall, Online

    This is the final episode of the second series in the Gardens Trust’s new partnership with the county gardens trusts, looking at restoration in action. Join Yorkshire Gardens Trust to learn about researching, restoring and reinterpreting a selection of glorious gardens in the county. The chosen projects cover four centuries of garden design and showcase the skills, sensitivities and determination needed to conserve and enhance historic gardens. This ticket is for the course of 3 sessions. or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions, costing £8. [Gardens Trust and Yorkshire Gardens Trust Members may purchase tickets at £15.75 for the series or £6 each talk]. Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/restoration-in-action-yorkshire-tickets-780066468807 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.

    Both created at the same time in the early 18th century by some of the same craftsmen, these two Yorkshire sites have seen centuries of change and challenge before coming into the care of the National Trust.

    Wentworth Castle Gardens near Barnsley was conceived as a grand expression of aristocratic pride and taste. The remains of this vision sit at the core of the site, overlaid with important 19th and 20th century influences. The contemporary Beningbrough Hall near York was the creation of a wealthy young gentry couple hoping to consolidate and enhance their family status. The remarkable preservation of their house stands in contrast to the much-altered garden and parkland.

    Most recently, both sites have shifted from being private spaces to thriving public assets. How has this developed and how is the contemporary National Trust working at these places to further enhance their social benefit alongside ensuring the care and conservation of nationally significant heritage assets?

    Matthew Constantine is a heritage professional with over 25 years of experience. He now works as a Cultural Heritage Curator for the National Trust in Yorkshire, including supporting the site teams at Wentworth and Beningbrough to understand, care for and interpret their places.

  • Wednesday, March 22, 11:00 am – The Gardens of Harewood House, Online

    There are over 100 acres of gardens and pleasure grounds at Harewood, set within an ornamental parkland of over 1,000 acres created during the 18th century. The Gardens comprise various horticultural areas, each different in style, and containing a significant plant collection throughout. Trevor will give a brief history of the gardens before talking about the work of the gardens team over the past three decades and provide a glimpse into the future.

    The Terrace – a Victorian, Italianate formal garden, complete with C19 parterre by Sir Charles Barry, with fountains, clipped yew and box, prominent mixed flower borders and a large scale sub-tropical planting scheme.

    The Himalayan Garden – a naturalistic sunken garden with waterfall and stream, rock and bog gardens containing a thematic plant collection, including trees and shrubs, rhododendrons, and herbaceous plants from Asia.

    The Walled Garden – a traditional utilitarian garden, built in the 1750’s and divided into two parts, with a productive kitchen garden, flower borders, apple orchard and meadow.

    Trevor Nicholson has been Head Gardener at Harewood for 28 years. His horticulture career began in 1980 at Houghall College, Durham, where he trained in Horticulture and Arboriculture. At Harewood Trevor has worked continuously on the revival, conservation and development of the gardens: introducing bold new planting schemes in the formal terrace gardens, tree & shrub planting in the park, as well as the re-development of the 1930’s rock garden as a Himalayan Garden with a significant collection of Sino-Himalayan plants. Trevor also brought the Walled Garden back into production in the 1990s and is working with the executive team on its restoration and development. With the help of grants from the RHS Bursaries Committee, and support from Harewood House Trust, Trevor undertook two botanical study tours to Nepal, China and Bhutan – informing the development of the Himalayan Garden at Harewood.

    This is the fourth in a series of talks in which the speakers will introduce a variety of landscapes, gardens and themes enjoyed by Yorkshire Gardens Trust members which portray the wide diversity of designed landscapes in the 3 Yorkshire counties and the interests of the membership. 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. £5 each or all 5 for £20 Register through Eventbrite HERE.

  • Wednesday, March 15, 10:00 am – “Exceedingly Fine Country”: An Eighteenth Century Tour of Yorkshire, Online

    This online March 15 talk will examine the travel accounts of Philip Yorke (later 2nd Earl of Hardwicke) and his wife, Jemima Marchioness Grey, focusing on their tours of Yorkshire – which Grey judged to be ‘exceeding fine country’. Both keen travelers, the couple often spent summers touring the length and breadth of the country seeking inspiration for their own garden improvements at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. Their travel accounts reveal shifting attitudes to garden design and engagement with the emerging discourse of the picturesque in the mid-eighteenth century, which is particularly evident in their accounts of Studley Royal. While Yorke had praised Aislabie’s improvements when he first visited in 1744; by the time he visited again in 1755 with his wife, both were critical of the way the gardens had been ‘tortured’ to fulfil the owner’s fancy – preferring instead the ‘wild Hilly romantic Country that forms Studley Park.’

    Dr Jemima Hubberstey completed a collaborative doctoral award with the University of Oxford and English Heritage in 2021, in which she examined the influence of literary coteries on garden design in the mid-eighteenth century, with a particular focus on the circle at Wrest Park. She is currently a postdoctoral research assistant for ‘Mithraic Groves and Gothic Towers: Reuniting the Lost Literary Legacies of Wrest and Wimpole’, a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship between the University of Oxford, the National Trust, and English Heritage. This project examines the shared literary, gardening, and cultural connections between Wrest Park and Wimpole Hall when both were owned by the Yorke family in the mid-eighteenth century. She recently assisted English Heritage with new garden interpretation at Wrest Park and has published on Jemima Grey’s engagement with garden design in the Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies.

    This is the third of a series sponsored by the Yorkshire Gardens Trust. 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. Register HERE £5 each or all 5 for £20

  • Wednesday, March 8, 10:00 am – Historic Parks for the Future: Cannon Hall, Online

    Cannon Hall dates back to the 14th century but it doesn’t become the parkland we see today until the 1760’s onwards, with obvious transition from Georgian splendour to Victorian folly it remained unchanged throughout the 20th century. Sold to Barnsley Council in 1951 the parkland and Hall have welcomed visitors for over 70 years, as the new millennium dawned the parkland and gardens needed fundamental repairs, and so £3.4million was invested to Restore the Glory and Reveal the Secrets. This talk looks at the appointment of the Project Manager Sharon Sutton, why she was chosen to manage the refurbishment, and how she navigated her way through the 4 year project to Historic Parks for the Future – Cannon Hall provide visitors with a destination parkland and gardens, but also delivered improvements the Council and visitors didn’t expect.

    Sharon Sutton started her career in the Agricultural Industry and became increasingly interested in the places where she worked, the landscape, woodland, plants and wildlife were all fascinating, so a change of career was needed. A HND in Landscape Science was obtained in 1998 and as a result, she joined local government working in the Parks and Gardens sector for the next 24 years. During this period, she developed a particular interest in Historic Parks and Gardens and their associated buildings, renovating them for the benefit of the public and wildlife, and searching for ways to ensure their long-term use and protection.

    In this second of a series of talks the speakers will introduce a variety of landscapes, gardens and themes enjoyed by Yorkshire Gardens Trust members which portray the wide diversity of designed landscapes in the 3 Yorkshire counties and the interests of the membership. £5 each or all 5 for £20. Register HERE.

  • Wednesday, March 1, 1:00 pm – From Naumachia to Naval Warfare: Nautical Frolics in British Parks, Online

    “Look Out Behind You!!” The audience shouts out warnings to the ‘actors’ in the aquatic and pyrotechnic panto that is performed three afternoons a week each summer in Peasholm Park, Scarborough. The excitements of ‘Naval Warfare’ are unique. It is the last of the Naumachia, or mock naval battles, that have been ‘fought’ on the lakes of European gardens and parks since the Renaissance. Naumachia is the Romanised Greek word that described gladiatorial sea fights in the flooded Colosseum. When revived in the Renaissance, they became frolicsome pageants. For Georgian Britons, they combined ‘messing about in boats’ with re-enactment of the latest naval victory. Manned miniature warships, fortlets and docks adorned parkland lakes. Victorians paid to attend these spectacles. The March 1 Yorkshire Gardens Trust lecture will romp its way through these frolics to highlight the cultural significance of Scarborough’s ‘Naval Warfare’, which was launched in 1927 in Britain’s only public park designed exclusively in the Japanese style.

    Dr Patrick Eyres has, since 1981, created 54 editions of the unique, artist-illustrated New Arcadian Journal, which engages with the cultural politics of designed landscapes. Naumachia (1995) is a history of Peasholm Park, Naval Warfare and the Naumachia tradition. He has published extensively, most recently on the poetic gardening of Ian Hamilton Finlay in Penny Florence (ed.), Thinking The Sculpture Garden: Art, Plant, Landscape (2020), and in the 40th anniversary edition of the New Arcadian Journal, Atlantic Flowers: The Naval Memorials of Little Sparta (2022), as well as in the 50th anniversary issue of Garden History (2022). For many years he served on the boards of the Little Sparta Trust, Garden History Society, Leeds Art Fund, and Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust. On behalf of The Gardens Trust, he set up and chaired for ten years the annual New Research Symposium in Garden History.

    In this first of a series of talks the speakers will introduce a variety of landscapes, gardens and themes enjoyed by Yorkshire Gardens Trust members which portray the wide diversity of designed landscapes in the 3 Yorkshire counties and the interests of the membership. £5 each or all 5 for £20. Register HERE.