The Garden Museum ….. the U.K.

Spring Plant Fair 2023 Our Spring Plant Fair returns on Sunday 16 April!  This beloved specialist plant fair has been held at the Garden Museum for over 40 years, gathering expert plant growers and specialist nurseries from around the country to sell some of the best garden plants you’ll find in London. From shade specialists to plants for pollinators, meet the growers and they will help you pick something special that will flourish for whatever growing space you have available, be it a garden, window box, balcony or allotment. Stalls will include Beth Chatto Gardens, Moore & Moore Plants, Glendon Farm Nursery, and Nobottle Nursery. This year’s fair will also feature a programme of talks and activities curated by Susanna Grant, founder of Hackney-based shade specialist plant shop Hello There Linda. More details coming soon! Sun 16 April, 10am – 4pm £5 Standard, £4 Friends Book tickets The Wild Escape There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden… what else can we find outside? We are delighted to be taking part in #TheWildEscape with Art Fund and hundreds of other museums this year! The project unites schools, families and museums in a big celebration of UK wildlife and nature. Our project will explore science and art through school visits exploring the world of earthworms. Pupils will investigate the structure of earthworms using microscopes, and then make a small wormery to take back to school. The Garden Museum will also create our own wormery! And in February half-term and the Easter holidays, we will have family workshops creating two-dimensional creatures out of paper inspired by the wildlife we find in our gardens. These will be displayed as a collaborative artwork for Earth Day on 22 April, and on display until the end of May. Attend a workshop A History of Potted Plants By Giovanni Aloi, Curator Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits In 1939, Lucian Freud painted a stack of clay pots. At first glance, this is a simple and charming image. On the right is a potted prickly pear (opuntia). On the left is a small silvery pachyphytum. From the perspective of a plant lover, there isn’t much to see… The pads of the prickly pear are cropped by the picture frame—much of the plant is left out. It is not what Freud wanted to focus on. The pachyphytum looks unassuming and fragile in its tiny clay pot. Unusual in composition and even stranger in subject, this is one of the most overlooked paintings by Lucian Freud. But this is one of Freud’s most meaningful works, especially if considered in the context of his long-lasting determination to paint plants in a way that no other artist had previously done. Potted plants have a long history and yet western art has had a complicated relationship with them. It is known that clay and ceramic pots were widely used in India, Japan, China, and Korea over 3000 years ago, mostly to bring plants closer to houses and in courtyards rather than indoors. Terracotta plant pots have been found in the Minoan palace at Knossos on Crete. The Romans preferred to plant lemon trees in large marble pots. And throughout the Middle Ages, pots were used in convents to grow herbs as well as to keep life-saving medicinal plants close at hand. Keep reading The House of a Lifetime: Umberto Pasti and Ngoc Minh Ngo Last few tickets! Writer Umberto Pasti’s house and garden in Tangier is the ultimate example of a well-curated Moroccan villa, filled with museum-quality pieces of furniture, luminous textiles, rare tiles, ceramics, and other objets d’art; set in a lush hillside garden filled with the native flora of northern Morocco. To celebrate the launch of their new book The House of a Lifetime, Umberto and photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo are joined in conversation by garden designer Tania Compton. Tues 21 February, 7pm £20 Standard, £15 Friends, £10 Young Fronds / Students £10 Livestream Book tickets Object of the Week: Horticultural Basketware (1937) This advert for horticultural basketware was pubished in the catalogue for the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Great Spring Show’ in the Royal Hospital grounds at Chelsea in 1937. The baskets were produced by disabled soldiers at the Lord Robert’s Workshops in London, which were established in the 1890s to provide employment and training for injured servicemen. By 1920 there were eleven workshops producing goods such as baskets, toys and furniture. Explore our collection online Images: Spring Plant Fair 2022 (c) Graham Lacdao; Islington Back Garden by Susan Shipp  (c.1960), Garden Museum Collection; A hand-coloured woodcut print of a 16th century gardener from ‘The Herbal’ or ‘Krauterbuch’ by Adam Lonicer (Lonitzer); Umberto Pasti’s house (c) Ngoc Minh Ngo Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

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Garden Museum Literary Festival 2023: Tickets available now! We are delighted to announce that the next Garden Museum Literary Festival will be held at Parham House, West Sussex on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 June 2023, hosted by Lady Emma Barnard and her husband, James. This boutique annual festival is Britain’s only travelling Literary Festival, with previous hosts including Chatsworth House (2022), Helmingham Hall (2021), and Houghton Hall (2019). Each venue provides a space over two summer days for us to celebrate the best in garden writing and to share what inspires us in gardens. Parham House is one of the country’s finest Elizabethan houses set at the foot of the South Downs in West Sussex. This beautiful place, with its award-winning gardens, has changed little over the centuries and remains a family home. The festival will include talks by some of the UK’s most influential and award-winning garden designers and authors, as well as opportunities to explore the magnificent historic gardens and house at Parham. Limited tickets available so don’t hesitate! Weekend Tickets (Friday and Saturday) Standard: £225 Friend: £190 Concession (Young Frond/Student/Unemployed): £95 Day Tickets Standard: £140 Friend: £120 Concession (Young Frond/Student/Unemployed): £60 The festival programme will be announced at a later date. Book tickets Images: Parham House photo by Elizabeth Zeschin; Parham Long Gallery with vine leaf pattern painted by Oliver Messel, photo by Jonathan Wilkinson

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THE GARDEN MUSEUM NEWS …the UK

Sow, Grow Eat A new programme for teenagers to explore horticulture and cooking Do you know any teenagers aged 13-17 based in South London who might be interested in dipping their toes in the career of a gardener, food grower or chef? We are looking for up to eight teenagers to join our free ‘Sow, Grow, Eat’ programme, which involves spending one Saturday a month at the Garden Museum for ten months. Participants will learn sowing, planting and gardening skills in our greenhouse and gardens, then in our studio kitchen we’ll do hands-on cooking sessions using some of the produce grown throughout the year. No prior experience necessary, just an enthusiasm for plants! Apply by Monday 13 February Programme runs March – December Find out more Life Drawing Class Lucian Freud: Drawing Plant Portraits Back for a second session by popular demand! Lucian Freud is infamous for his gritty, fleshy nudes, and so inspired by our current exhibition Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits, London Drawing Group will be offering a life drawing class like no other. Set against the soaring backdrop of our central nave space, and nestled amongst a backdrop of lush plants, our incredible model Lily will be posing in, with and amongst our leafy friends. Tickets include access to the exhibition, guided instruction and bespoke drawing exercises throughout our Life Drawing class. Fri 24 February, 6.30pm – 8.3pm £30 Standard, £25 Friends / Young Fronds Book tickets Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77): View Across the Rooftops of Lambeth Palace A rare 17th century sketch of the view from our medieval tower is currently on auction with Sotheby’s. We take a closer look at what we can learn from the sketch in this article, reproduced from ‘Sotheby’s New York January 2023 Catalogue: Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries’: Wenceslaus Hollar’s bird’s eye view of Lambeth House (Palace), official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a splendid example of the artist’s dynamic ‘on the spot’ sketches. It has not appeared at auction since the drawing was discovered in a sale, in 1931, by the art historian, Iolo A. Williams. Its re-emergence, as a work by Hollar, provides a wonderful opportunity to delight and delve into the world of this fascinating Bohemian artist, whose drawings rarely come to the market. Born in Prague in 1607, Wenceslaus Hollar was a prolific draughtsman and printmaker, who is perhaps best known for his visual records of mid 17th century England. His drawings and prints of London before the great fire of 1666 are historical documents of great importance, as well as aesthetically appealing images of a bygone world. Keep reading

Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits Exhibition Catalogue Can’t make it to see our Lucian Freud exhibition in person, or want to find out more his artistic relationship with plants? The exhibition catalogue is available now in our online bookshop! Beautifully illustrated with examples of Freud’s plant paintings and etchings, this catalogue includes interviews with Freud’s longtime studio assistant David Dawson and daughter Annie Freud. Order your copy for just £20 Buy a catalogue Call for papers! Visions of Welfare Conference This May we are hosting an international conference discussing the role of women in the creation of the spaces of the post-war Welfare States, co-hosted by the Women of the Welfare Landscape Project, the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain and the Women in Danish Architecture project. The importance of quality open spaces for health and wellbeing has been highlighted more than ever by the Covid-19 pandemic. And historically the provision of well designed, accessible, open public spaces was a crucial part of a wider concept of economic redistribution. While previous research has uncovered the work of many individual ‘heroines’ and celebrated iconic design projects by women, this conference invites abstracts that consider the role of women in creating the spaces of the period internationally with the aim of looking beyond individual achievements and professional boundaries. Abstracts of 200 words are invited and should be submitted online by Monday 30 January 2023 Tickets to attend the conference will be available soon Find out more Object of the Week: Illustrated Letters in the William Shute Barrington Archive By Alice Ridgway, Archivist January 16th marked ‘Blue Monday’ the most melancholy day of the year. However, mine was brightened by discovering some charming drawings in the William Shute Barrington archive, which we hold in the Archive of Garden Design. The archive contains correspondence, plans, plant lists, sketches and paintings between 1920-1940 relating to the gardening career of Viscount William ‘Bill’ Reginald Barrington (1873-1960). After a career in the military, Barrington restored and redesigned gardens at a number of stately homes in East Sussex and further afield. His gardening philosophy aimed to give the illusion that a garden had existed forever, stating that ‘its relationship to the surrounding fields, hills and buildings should have a naturalness borne of scrupulous attention to detail’. The letters I found were sent by Guy Roderick Falkner, an unknown gardening friend of Barrington. They thank him for his plant cuttings and hospitality and give short updates about his horticultural projects. My favourite drawing features two cartoon birds – most likely a depiction of the tame pair of starlings that lived with Barrington alongside his partner, Violet Gordon Woodhouse. Keep reading Images: Sow, Grow, Eat illustration by Ross Bennett; Plant Life Drawing photo courtesy of Luisa MacCormack; Visions of Welfare Conference © Fortepan / Szabó Gábor

Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

Amazing Contemporary Hydrangea Arrangement

www.instagram.com/reel/CnTF_ImIZ8R/

Check it out. Very genius…,,

Just As I Am….

When we look at a Tree do we think about these reminders. They are powerful. So every time you pass a tree… be it small or large in stature…..think of what the tree is telling you. It’s a great example of how equally important both tree and “me” really are.

Thank you God….for all the trees…..and all the “me’s.”

Amen!

THE GARDEN MUSEUM …..the UK

Talk | The House of a Lifetime: Umberto Pasti and Ngoc Minh Ngo We are delighted to welcome writer Umberto Pasti joined in conversation by photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo to celebrate the publication of their new book The House of a Lifetime: A Collector’s Journey in Tangier.Saturated colours, intricate patterns, striking architecture: Pasti’s house and garden in Tangier is the ultimate example of a well-curated Moroccan villa, filled with museum-quality pieces of furniture, luminous textiles, rare tiles and ceramics, and other objets d’art worthy of a private museum. Set in a lush hillside garden filled with the native flora of northern Morocco, the house offers glimpses of the serene landscapes and fountains through windows, archways and loggias. Umberto and Ngoc’s conversation will be chaired by garden designer and Garden Museum Trustee Tania Compton. Tues 21 February, 7pm £20 Standard, £15 Friends, £10 Young Fronds and Students £10 Livestream Book tickets Garden Museum Literary Festival 2023: Parham House We are delighted to announce that the next Garden Museum Literary Festival will be held at Parham House, West Sussex on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 June 2023, hosted by Lady Emma Barnard and her husband, James. Parham House is one of the country’s finest Elizabethan houses set at the foot of the South Downs in West Sussex. This beautiful place, with its award-winning gardens, has changed little over the centuries and remains a family home. This Monday 16 January we will be releasing tickets to Friends for a week of priority booking! To enjoy discounted tickets and grab your tickets ahead of the public release on Monday 23 January, become a Friend from just £36 a year. Become a Friend Sowing Roots: Esiah Levy Esiah Levy, known as Rodney Levy to his family, created SeedsShare in 2016. This involved growing vegetables in his back garden, saving the seeds and then sending them to people around the world for the cost of postage. He hoped that people would send different seeds back to him, to grow, save and send. He came to the Garden Museum in January 2018 to take part in Incredible Edible Lambeth’s Seed Swap event sharing seeds that he’d grown. Esiah was born in Croydon in July 1986, was married and a father to two young sons. The Garden Museum had hoped to interview Esiah for our Sowing Roots: Caribbean Garden Heritage project but in January 2019, Esiah passed away very suddenly, at the age of 32. When we finally embarked on the Sowing Roots project in 2020, we still wanted to include Esiah Levy’s story. We set about trying to make contact with his family. Food writer (and Great British Bake-Off finalist) Ruby Tandoh had written about him. It was by contacting Ruby directly that we were introduced to Esiah’s widow Kealy and his sister Syreeta who both agreed to be interviewed and part of our Sowing Roots exhibition. Keep reading

Enter the Lucian Freud raffle! Enter our fundraising raffle to win an exclusive private tour of Lucian Freud’s former studio in Kensington! Second prize will win a priceless cutting from Freud’s own Zimmerlinde plant, the subject of many of his paintings, and third prize is a framed photographic print by Howard Sooley of Freud’s studio. Each ticket counts as an additional entry to the prize draw and the money raised from the raffle will support the Garden Museum and help to ensure the continuation our exhibitions, education and community programmes. £10 a ticket Winners drawn on Monday 6 March Enter the raffle Could you be the next Chair of the Garden Museum Board of Trustees? We’re currently recruiting for a new Chair to lead the Board of Trustees during an exciting period of the Garden Museum’s development. Read more about what being a Chair means, how the role supports the Museum, and how to apply below. Find out more Object of the Week: Carters “Tested” Garden Seeds Catalogue, 1898 The back cover of a garden seed catalogue from James Carter & Co., 237, 238 & 97 High Holborn, London, featuring an illustration of dianthus varieties. Explore our collection online Images: Umberto Pasti’s Tangier home (c) Ngoc Minh Ngo; Parham House (c) Elizabeth Zeschin; Esiah Levy photo by Maria Bell for Table Magazine; Cutting from Freud’s zimmerlinde (c) Matt Collins; Still Life with Zimmerlinde, c.1950 Freud, Lucian (1922-2011) Credit: Private Collection. Photo © Christie’s Images/© The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2022/Bridgeman Images; Garden Museum exterior photo by Ollie Tomlinson

Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

THE GARDEN MUSEUM – from the UK

Talk | Alice Vincent: Why Women Grow We are delighted to host the official launch of Alice Vincent’s new book Why Women Grow, a major narrative exploration of the relationship between women and the soil. The book was borne of a determination to tell the stories that have too-frequently been buried in the earth for centuries. Over the course of two, largely locked-down years, Alice visited the gardens and growing spaces of 45 women from all walks of life. Why Women Grow is a collection of these conversations, along with Alice’s own personal journey as she contemplates a new phase of life. She will be joined on-stage by two women from the book, herbologist and chef Maya Thomas, Medical Herbalist and Ayurvedic Practitioner Anne McIntyre and gardener and creator of Decolonise the Garden, Sui Searle, to discuss the reasons why women go to ground. Tues 28 Feb, 7pm Standard £20, Friends / Young Fronds £15 Book add-on available Book tickets Film | Lucian Freud: Wasteground, Paddington (1970) The view from the window at 227 Gloucester Terrace in London was far from bucolic. Painted when the artist was in his late 40s, this abandoned garden in Paddington—then a rundown and densely populated area just north of Hyde Park—captures a story of human and plant resilience. Guest Curator Giovanni Aloi shares what we can learn from this unconventional l garden painting. Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits is open until 5 March Digital Partner Patch Plants Watch more films in our online exhibition

William Pamplin: Nurseryman of Lavender Hill By Thomas Rutter Former Horticultural Trainee at the Garden Museum, Thomas became curious about William Pamplin when he discovered his diaries in the Museum’s Archive. The full article ‘William Pamplin: Nurseryman of Lavender Hill’ appeared in The London Gardener journal (v26). William Pamplin (1765-1844) is today not a name known to most. Yet he was once a celebrated nurseryman acquainted with some of the leading lights in the horticultural world. Pamplin’s diaries, donated to the Garden Museum Archive, cover the period 1827–1841 and paint a vivid picture of the life and times of a Regency nurseryman. On the expiry of his lease on the Pine Apple Nursery in c.1826 on the Kings Road, Pamplin moved his enterprise south of the Thames to what Robert Sweet described as ‘the more airy and healthy situation of Lavender-hill, in the Wandsworth-road, at a pleasant distance from London, and where the choice herbaceous, and other plants, may be expected to thrive much better than nearer the smoke of the metropolis’. Pamplin’s diaries describe not only his growing and purveying of plants but document a range of activities that suggest that metropolitan nurserymen were imaginative and resourceful at a time of great horticultural extravagance… Keep reading A New Season of Cooking Masterclasses Got a new year’s resolution up to up your cooking game? Join us in our Learning Studio kitchen for a hands-on cooking masterclass! Hosted by expert food writers and chefs, the sessions include tastings or a full meal eaten together depending on the course. All profits from our cooking masterclass series help to cover food costs for our community programmes. Coming up this season: Fermentation with Claire Heal | Sun 19 Feb Book tickets Vegetarian Feast with Zita Steyn | Sun 19 March Book tickets Borough Market: The Knowledge with Angela Clutton | Sun 30 April Book tickets Herbs with Rachel Davies | Sun 21 May Book tickets £90 per person, includes all ingredients See all cooking classes Happy New Year! The Garden Museum will be open again from Monday 9 January, and we look forward to welcoming you back this year. But before we get digging into 2023, over on Instagram we’re celebrating some of our highlights from the past twelve months, from show-stopping floral design for British Flowers Week to talking compost at our Spring Plant Fair, and luxuriating in the glamour and beauty of roses. See our 2022 highlights Images: Why Women Grow illustration courtesy of Canongate; Fermentation jars (c) Claire Heal; British Flowers Week 2022 (c) Graham Lacdao

Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

One job….for the record books (REVISED ) Wed – 1/4 – 3:10 pm

Day 1

36 degrees by 9:30 am on Thursday 12/29 and imagine that we are gardening today. It was in the mid/teens most of the days during the Christmas holidays.so the earth is fairly cold  but only two if the night were in the teens  so we don’t think the duration of intense cold was enough to freeze everything underground  

Our repeat client has had a bucket load of family issues. So for her the fall season slipped away from her radar. But…. Steady-Edfie, moi’ is going to her house this morning to dig up 200 Daffodil bulbs from years of being covered by deep dirt and mulch. Ha! They might just bloom this spring if we can dig them up and bring them more to the surface. Cover with, and add some new soil…. plus spread them out in the generous bed she has.

VA winter weather can be unpredictable. 25 degrees one day and 65 the next. And although we are not quite that warm, we are going to complete this task. And some very well established “Iris” need to be moved as well. Total will be around 5 hours.

Day 2

Please stay tuned for a final wrap up and a video with the bulbs planted. We are positioning them about only 5 inches deep, because we will add more mulch. It turns out our client divided them up into large (32), medium (90) and very small, over 100. We will find neighbors to give them too. Typically when bulbs are tiny they just have become so overcrowded in the bed,  and are so compact they are unable to produce. So all in all,  this “dig and divide” process was way overdue. We are hopefully going to see the 32 bulbs produce lovely blooms come spring, which is really not that far off. Oh what a blessing. We can’t wait!

“Contessa”

(REVISED) Wed – 3:10 pm – 1/4

We promised a “final” video, so there you have it  32 latest bulbs spaced nicely in the bed and covered back up with the mulch that was originally covering the bed. I have  ordered  a 2 cu ft bag if the “black” Quail Ridge shredded mulch from the nursery in MD because supplies are low Post Christmas at the Alexandria location. It should be here Sat,  so we’ll spread in just in case we get a hard freeze in the remaining winter days. After all our hard work to recover the bulbs we surely don’t want to loose them …. and we must admit we are slightly out of sync with Mother Nature on this project.  But with a little luck and a prayer we will produce blooms come late March or early April. It was such a fun project and our homeowner admitted that first thing each morning, she goes right to her window to keep her eye out for any new “popping up.” from her little guys. Awesomeness!

Christmas Cheer to all!

We hope everyone has a wonderful day today. Our weather is certainly going to be a bit challenging, so please slow down… savor the moments and take extra good care.

Blessings!

“Contessa”

THE GARDEN MUSEUM News, the UK

Sarah Price: Designing a Cedric Morris-inspired Garden For the 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, The Nurture Landscapes Garden built by Crocus and designed by Sarah Price will be inspired by artist-plantsman Cedric Morris’ garden at Benton End. To find out more about what to expect from this exciting project, we had a few questions for Sarah:How did this project come about? Nearly four years ago, I was lucky to visit Benton End, and spend time immersed in the garden. It was April and demure fritillaries and Anemone pavonina scattered the long grass like a beautiful tracing. Entrancing, and as close to a medieval mead as I’ve ever seen, this filigree was a physical and enduring memory of Cedric Morris’ plantings. This visit to Benton triggered memories of Sarah Cook’s mesmerising display of Benton Iris within the Pavilion at Chelsea in 2015. The poise of the Iris and their wavering hard-to-describe colours were pure, visual pleasure! Together with Cedric Morris’ paintings, these two experiences helped to build up a picture of Benton End as a place of astonishing creativity; a place latent with inspiration for a Chelsea garden design. Knowing that the plants and materials of a Chelsea garden could support the reimagining and reopening of Benton End gave the project added depth and longevity… Keep reading Merry Christmas from the Garden Museum! This is our last newsletter of the year, the next Garden Museum News will land in your inboxes early January. If you’re planning to visit the Garden Museum over the festive season, please make a note of our Christmas closure: Garden Museum: last day open Wednesday 21 December, re-opening Monday 9 January Garden Café: closing after lunch Friday 23 December, re-opening Monday 9 January We hope you all have a restful break, and look forward to welcoming you back in the New Year! Plan your visit

Object of the Week: Christmas Tree Growers, c.1912 This photo from the 1912 publication One & All: Gardening Annual of Amateurs & All Garden Lovers shows two men pulling up the year’s Christmas trees, location unknown. Gift of Tony Elphick Explore our collection online Images: Illustration for The Nurture Landscapes Garden courtesy of Sarah Price Landscapes

Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk