THE GARDEN MUSEUM- a beautiful post today from the U.K. – a special note: on the lovely flower “the sweet pea”

Benton Irises: It’s all in a name By Lucy Skellorn Artist plantsman Cedric Morris will be celebrated on the main avenue at The RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year in an exciting collaboration between Nurture Landscapes and garden designer Sarah Price. A distinguished painter, Morris experimented with the cross-pollination of irises to produce new colour combinations. Famous for their off-beat shades, Cedric named many varieties after friends, lovers, pets and places. Ahead of the show, we take a look at the stories behind the names: Iris ‘Benton Menace’ (pictured above) Morris had a deep fondness and empathy for animals resulting in quite a menagerie at Benton End. This included Rubeo, the scarlet macaw who would nip the legs of anyone wearing shorts and swore liberally. There were also a host of cats that roamed the property, many of them predominantly cream-coloured, locally known as Suffolk creams. Among them the one-eyed ‘Mrs Pearce’, ‘Baggage’ (on account of her having had so many litters of kittens) and ‘ Menace’- a particularly troublesome Tom. Both cats have been immortalised in Iris ‘Benton Baggage’ and ‘Benton Menace’, but it is ‘Benton Menace’, with its fabulous iris with rich purple falls and ruffled, plum-coloured standards, which has been chosen for the Chelsea garden… Keep reading Visit the Garden Museum during the Chelsea Flower Show Heading to London for The RHS Chelsea Flower Show this week? Why not pop across the river to the Garden Museum while you’re in town to see our Dan Pearson-designed courtyard garden just coming into its summer glory. Plus visit our current exhibition Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden, and stop by our award-winning Garden Cafe to enjoy a daily changing menu of modern-British and European, light, fresh and seasonal dishes. Limited tables are available in the lushly-planted courtyard for the ultimate blissful Garden Museum experience: book a table. Plan your visit Talk this week | Sarah Price on building a sustainable Chelsea Flower Show garden We are delighted to host an evening with garden designer Sarah Price joined in conversation by co-founders of Local Works Studio, Ben and Loretta Boscence. Sarah, Ben and Loretta will discuss how they transformed waste materials into garden features for The Nurture Landscapes Garden using accessible processes and crafts. Features have been designed to be carefully deconstructed for reuse at their permanent home, at Benton End. Weds 24 May, 7pm £20 Standard, £15 Friends / Young Fronds £10 Livestream Book tickets British Flowers Week 2023: Three weeks to go! Our annual British Flowers Week exhibition is back this summer, championing British-grown flowers, sustainable floristry and the immense talent in floral design found across the country. Five florists hand-picked by the Garden Museum will build immersive floral installations around the museum, transforming the space for five days. The floral designers – Botanical Tales, Lucy Vail Floristry, Mahal Kita Flowers, SAGE and Yinari – will use only seasonal, sustainably-sourced, British-grown flowers, arranged with environmentally friendly materials and methods. This year’s theme is ‘New Beginnings’, inspired by fresh starts, budding new growth, changing seasons and an optimistic step forward for the floral industry. The week will also include a panel talkand a Friday Late. 8-12 June Book your visit Plant of the Week: Cedric’s Sweet Pea By Matt Collins, Head Gardener Generosity abounds among gardeners, and the gift of seeds is a marvellous thing: that the transference of so small an entity can express such joy, promise, discernment and encouragement. As we approach Chelsea Flower Show week, with all its beauty, buzz and bustle, it feels a good moment to celebrate this most grounding aspect of horticulture – the sharing of plants between all gardeners, potterers and professionals alike. The sweet peas now in flower and perfuming the Garden Museum entrance are among my most treasured of gardening gifts, sown from seed that has been passed from gardener to gardener over many decades, tracing back to plantsman Sir Cedric Morris and to his garden at Benton End. Morris and Benton are the inspiration for Sarah Price’s show garden at Chelsea this coming week, where his sweet peas will, alongside an intoxicating array of plants (including the irises Morris once bred in that garden), evoke Benton in its unbridled, colour-brimming 1950s heyday. Collected as a wild variety of Lathyrus odoratus he had spotted growing in Sicily, Morris cultivated this sweet pea at Benton End and later shared seed with the garden writer Tony Venison. From Venison seeds travelled via a mutual acquaintance to landscape designer Dan Pearson, who in turn sent me a handful in the post during my time in the garden at Benton End in the early months of the pandemic. Last autumn I sowed it earlier than usual and, hardy as they are, the plants persevered through the difficult winter: they were planted out on a hazel wigwam in March and the first of the flowers appeared a few weeks ago. The scent is pervasive, addictive and evocative of an enchanting garden that was an inspiration to so many influential gardeners. Be sure to stick your nose in as you pass through the museum doors… As part of our new ‘Branch Out’ series of free activities and events held in the museum nave, we are holding a seed swapon Thursday 1 June, 11am-2pm. Drop in, drop off and pick up some seeds — flower, vegetable, herb, mystery plant(!), all welcome. Branch Out Seed Swap Elsewhere… we recommend Tom Stuart-Smith talk at Sir John Soane’s Museum By Design, a talk series at Sir John Soane’s Museum, in partnership with Luke Irwin, is back for its fourth season.  Internationally renowned designers are invited to discuss their practice through a single object from the Museum. In this talk, Alice Rawsthorn talks to landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith. Mon 5 Jun, 6pm – 8.30pm £30 Find out more Images: Benton Menace (c) Alison Sargeant; Cat at Benton End (c) Estate of Elvic Steele; British Flowers Week 2022 (c) Graham Lacdao; Cedric’s sweet pea (c) Matt Collins; Tom Stuart-Smith garden at Hepworth Wakefield (c) Jason Ingram Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

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THE GARDEN MUSEUM from the U.K.

Literary Festival 2023 | Line-up and extra tickets released! We are delighted to share the first confirmed speakers for this year’s Garden Museum Literary Festival, and to celebrate we’ve released a limited amount of extra tickets! Some of the UK’s most influential and award-winning garden designers and writers will be joining us at Parham Housein Sussex over two summer days, to celebrate the best in garden writing and to share what inspires us in gardens, including Alan Titchmarsh, Advolly Richmond, Isabel Bannerman, Olivia Harrison and Tom Stuart-Smith. This year we are pleased to also offer an additional six weekend tickets free of charge to students of horticulture and garden design. To apply, please submit around 100 words on why you would benefit from attending to info@gardenmuseum.org.uk, by Monday 22 May. Our 2023 Literary Festival will take place at Parham House, one of the country’s finest Elizabethan houses set at the foot of the South Downs in West Sussex, hosted by Lady Emma Barnard and her husband, James. Fri 23 – Sat 24 June Limited extra tickets available now! See the Lit Fest line-up Last chance to see! Cecilia Charlton: Memory Garden Inspired by memories of garden flowers and the slowing of time needed to create both gardens and textiles, four large-scale site-specific weavings by artist Cecilia Charlton are on display this weekend in our historic nave for London Craft Week. Free entry Until Sunday 14 May Find out more Book Extract | Andrew Timothy O’Brien: To Stand and Stare Ahead of his book launch at the Museum on Tuesday 30 May, we share an exclusive extract from podcaster, writer, and online garden coach Andrew Timothy O’Brien’s new book ‘To Stand and Stare: How to garden while doing next to nothing’: “Let’s get one thing straight. Your garden will get along quite well without you. It just won’t be your garden. It will be that piece of land where once a garden was, and there is no tragedy in that. Every square inch of our planet’s surface is trying to get back to a state where it feels at ease with itself, a way of being from which forestry and agriculture, road building, town planning and, yes, even gardening continually strive to hold it back. This is not whimsy. This is science. I can see it happening in my lawn, in my flowerbeds and borders and, particularly, in the more forgotten corners of the garden where plants I don’t remember inviting in make themselves at home, sinking roots deep down into soil while reaching ever skyward to gather in the sun’s largesse…” Keep reading Talk this week | Greening the Desert While working in the Middle East in the 1980s, landscape architect Diana Armstrong Bell discovered a new approach to her field: greening the desert. In this talk, she will share the stories and inspiration that she drew from her experiences in the Middle East, from water capture to resilient planting, and how she applied these ideas at the Arabian Gulf University, Bahrain – even setting up a plant nursery on site. Diana will be joined in conversation by landscape architect, historian and horticulturist Karen Fitzsimon. Tues 15 May, 7pm £10 Standard, £5 Friend/Student/Young Frond £5 Livestream Book tickets Cooking Masterclass | Herbs with Rachel Davies In this three house cooking masterclass, herbs are the star of the show! Herbs can be delicate or hardy, exotic or growing in our public spaces and gardens, they have the potential to add flavour and interest to dishes and yet they are so often overlooked. Join chef and cookery teacher Rachel Davies as we explore how to use herbs of all kinds, some familiar and some less so, to make delicious food. The class includes a sit down lunch and a recipe pack to take away. Sample Menu Persian Kuku Sabzi (a baked omelette filled with chopped herbs) with a yoghurt, cucumber and fresh mint sauce Herb oil drizzled honey roasted pumpkin with puy lentils and marinated feta Tabbouleh Chocolate bark with dried edible flowers and herbs Poached plums with tarragon Sun 21 May, 10.45am-2pm £90, includes all ingredients Book tickets Branch Out: Design your own seed packet At this week’s free Branch Out session we will be exploring our archival seed packets for inspiration. Then participants can design and create your own packet using collage and mono-printing, filling them with seeds to take home. Thurs 18 May Drop-in 11am-1pm, 2pm-4pm Free entry Branch Out has been made possible thanks to funding from Arts Council England.  See all Branch Out events Object of the Week: The Artist’s House at 19 Queensland Avenue, London, by Harry Bush Bush and the artist Noel Laura Nisbet (1887–1956), whom he married in 1910, lived in the same semi-detached house in Queensland Avenue, Merton Park, SW19, (a gift from Noel’s father) from 1914 until their deaths. Over the years Bush regularly depicted the suburban back gardens seen from his studio, many of which were exhibited at The Royal Academy, as was the case with this work in 1940. Bush saw the ancestry of his art in the quiet dignity of Dutch and Flemish domestic scenes, and, as his younger daughter recalled, mixed pigments and oils, ‘so that his work should mellow, glow and last, and if possible, improve’. This painting is on display in our current exhibition Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden until 4 June. Presented in partnership with Liss Llewellyn, works are available to purchase in aid of our education and exhibitions programmes. Explore the online exhibition

Images: Parham House (c) Jonathan Wilkinson; Cecilia Charlton: Memory Garden installation view (c) Ben Deakin; Andrew Timothy O’Brien (c) Sundari Ferris; Greening the Desert illustration (c) Diana Armstrong Bell; Herbs (c) Rachel Davies; The Artist’s House by Harry Bush (1883-1957), image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn

THE GARDEN MUSEUM NEWS, the U.K.

New Talk! Dan Pearson at Dartington To mark the 90th anniversary of Beatrix Farrand’s involvement at Dartington, Dan Pearson, recipient of the 2022 Beatrix Farrand Society Achievement Award, will talk about the masterplan he has produced for the gardens. A settlement since the 9th century with a medieval Great Hall, the estate was acquired in 1925 by American heiress Dorothy Elmhirst and her English husband Leonard. Together they created a unique experiment in rural regeneration, agriculture, education and the arts. They employed several of the best known names in landscape and garden design during their time there including Henry Avray Tipping, Percy Crane, Preben Jacobsen and Beatrix Farrand. Pearson has taken the masterplan brief from the Elmhirst’s philosophy of a ‘reverence for the old and a joy in the new’. The 20 year plan for the gardens strikes a balance between respect for the old, while proposing gentle renovation. Tues 6 June, 7pm £20 Standard £15 Friends / Young Fronds £10 Livestream Book tickets Lunchtime talk this week Madoo: The Making of an American Garden For this lunchtime talk we are joined by Alejandro Saralegui, Executive Director of the Madoo Conservancy, to discover the story of a unique American garden. Madoo is a magical garden that had its genesis in the late 1960s on a fallow farm field in Sagaponack, in the Hamptons. Its founder Robert Dash, a self-taught gardener and painter who was also a noted poet, experimented as he went along, turning Madoo into a nexus of the American art and poetry worlds. He often described the garden as having “English bones and American flesh”, and Dash’s interpretations of historic garden periods fill the two-acre site, where Rosemary Verey’s influence can be clearly felt in the potager based on a drawing of her own at Barnsley House. Alejandro’s talk will include archival and present day photography of the garden as well as Dash’s own paintings that illustrate Madoo. Tues 2 May, 12pm £15 Standard £10 Friends, Young Fronds Book tickets Cecilia Charlton: Memory Garden Ahead of her installation Memory Garden opening at the Garden Museum for London Craft Week 8-14 May, we asked textile artist Cecilia Charlton a few questions to learn more about the ancient practice of weaving: How did you come to weaving, when did you realise you wanted to use it as your artistic medium? It is hard to pin down an exact moment when weaving captivated me — all I know is that all of a sudden I was completely obsessed. Every morning watching weaving videos on YouTube, ordering weaving books on eBay to learn techniques. Embroidery is such a rich practice, but you really can’t study the history of textiles without having a relationship with weaving. If there was no weaving, there would not be anything to embroider upon — to create paintings upon, for that matter. Weaving is so fundamental to our everyday life — through its success as a technology it has been rendered invisible by the modern eye. We are smothered in it, yet we completely take it for granted. I was completely fascinated by the incredible richness of weaving and the dynamic capabilities of historical techniques… Keep reading Cooking Workshops inspired by the Museum Collection Inspired by items currently on display in our collection, this new series of three daytime cooking classes led by Garden Museum Food Educator and Chef Ceri Jones will explore vegetable-centric cuisine, one seasonal ingredient at a time. The items chosen for this series include our temporary exhibition on Joy Larkcom, the queen of cut and come again salad leaves, a cucumber straightener and Cecil Beaton’s 1960 work The Cutting Garden, which features the edible flower nasturtium. Sample menu for our first session inspired by Joy Larkcom Spinach and Feta Filo Pie Griddled Pak Choi with Garlic and Chilli Rocket Pesto Orzo Salad Dates Joy Larkcom’s Salad Leaves | Thurs 18 May The Cucumber Straightener | Thurs 22 June Cecil Beaton’s Nasturtium | Thurs 13 July £40 per person Book tickets Watch: Tayshan Hayden-Smith and Tom Massey This week on our Instagram we shared a quick chat between guerrilla gardener Tayshan Hayden-Smith and garden designer Tom Massey. Filmed at the Garden Museum before Tom’s recent book launch, the meeting of minds covered sustainable gardening, early access to nature and favourite resilient plants. Tayshan Hayden-Smith is a social activist, guerrilla gardener, and RHS Ambassador. He founded Grow 2 Know in 2019 with the aim of making horticulture accessible to all. Tom Massey’s new book RHS Resilient Garden is out now. Watch Object of the Week: November 5th, 1933, by Eric Ravilious Catherine wheels, Roman candles, rockets. Ravilious was fascinated by the patterns fireworks make. They appear in his wood engravings, lithographs, ceramics, and the now lost mural for the Midland Hotel, Morecambe. November 5th, 1933 was painted in Stratford Road, Earls Court where Eric and Tirzah Garwood lived when they were first married. The painting depicts a row of gardens alive with activity on Guy Fawkes Night, and was first exhibited in his one-man show that opened on 24th November, 1933, at the Zwemmer Gallery. This painting is on display in our current exhibition Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden until 4 June. Presented in partnership with Liss Llewellyn. This particular work is not for sale but the majority of works in the exhibition are. For a price list and further details email christina@gardenmuseum.org.uk.  Book a visit Images: Chinese greens photo by Joy Larkcom, taken on her research trips around China and Japan, Archive of Garden Design; November 5th, 1933, Eric Ravilious, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

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THE GARDEN MUSEUM, the U.K.

Rupert Tyler appointed the Garden Museum’s next Chair of the Board of Trustees The Garden Museum is delighted to announce the appointment of Rupert Tyler to the role of Chair of the Board of Trustees. Rupert (pictured left) will take over the position, which has been held by Mark Fane (right) for twelve years, in June 2023. In his new role, Rupert will lead the Trustees and team in the strategic development of the Museum and in fulfilling its potential as the only Museum in Britain dedicated to the art, history and design of British gardens and their place in our lives today. Rupert brings a wealth of experience spanning different sectors and a keen interest in gardens, gardening and the arts. This is supported by his strong business background and understanding of the vital importance of diversity and inclusion in all areas of society. During his 35 years in the City, Rupert has managed a diverse portfolio of private clients including Trusts, Personal Pensions, Charities and Private Charitable Trusts. Rupert is Chair of Jerwood Arts, an endowed charity which seeks out and promotes excellence in artists in all art forms throughout the UK. He was appointed as Chair of the National Garden Scheme (NGS) in 2020, a role he will continue, having been a Trustee for some years. He and his partner, architectural and garden designer Charles Rutherfoord, have created and nurtured their own garden in London over the course of 35 years, featuring in many magazines and gardening programmes and open regularly for the National Garden Scheme. Both are Liverymen of the Worshipful Company of Gardeners. Keep reading New Talk! Andrew Timothy O’Brien: Let it go and let it grow With such a wealth of gardening advice available, it can be a job of work simply to decide who we should be listening to – and yet perhaps our most qualified instructor is the garden itself. In celebration of his new book To Stand and Stare, podcaster, writer, and online garden coach Andrew Timothy O’Brien considers the stories we’ve been taught about the whole business of gardening and wonders if there’s a way to be in a relationship with the natural world on our doorstep that’s not only more sympathetic to the needs of our environment, but also to our own physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. Join Andrew and Consultant Gardening Publisher for DK Books Chris Young as they discuss whether or not a different kind of relationship with the garden might be the answer we’re all looking for. Tues 30 May, 7pm £15 Standard £10 Friends / Young Fronds £5 Livestream Book tickets The Wild Escape: Earth Day Did you know that in the UK we have 31 species of earthworms? Earth Day 2023 at the Garden Museum offers the chance to see a creature that inhabits the soil and which has been called an ‘ecosystem engineer’. The very humble and underrated earthworm! They are important to the soil structure and fertility as they break down dead organic matter which releases nutrients into the soil which are taken up by plants. Come along and have a close look at earthworms using our digital microscopes and see if you can identify a species. We’ll also be making a collaborative three-dimensional garden using clay to depict some of the wildlife and plants that can be found in gardens and under the soil. Ceramics artist Monica Tong will be on hand to help. Sat 22 April, 10am – 3.30pm Free entry, drop-in Suitable for all ages The Wild Escape is made possible with support from Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants, with additional support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Kusuma Trust, Foyle Foundation and a group of generous individuals and trusts. Find out more Spring Plant Fair this Sunday! Come down to the Garden Museum this weekend to treat yourself to garden plants from some of our favourite specialist nurseries and growers, from shade specialists to plants for pollinators. This year’s stalls include historic nurseries Great Dixter Nurseries and Beth Chatto Plants & Gardens: meet the growers and pick their brains on what will flourish in your garden, balcony or allotment. Sun 16 April, 10am – 4pm £5 Standard, £4 Friends Book tickets Object of the Week: 7 Wilbury Crescent, Hove by Charles Burleigh (1869-1956) Assemblages of objects lying around an artist’s studio, paint brushes, pot plants, natural history objects, fabrics, often formed the subject of still lives, though the chance arrangement of a composition was rarely as casual as it appeared. In Burleigh’s studio view an easel is visible at the edge of the composition, with objects laid out in front, ready to be painted. A view of the terraced houses of the artist’s native Hove are visible beyond, seen through half-drawn curtains. This painting is on display in our current exhibition Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden until 4 June. Presented in partnership with Liss Llewellyn, works are available to purchase in aid of our education and exhibitions programmes. For a price list and further details email christina@gardenmuseum.org.uk.  Book a visit Images: Rupert Tyler  and Mark Fane © Jake Darling Photography; Andrew Timothy O’Brien © Sundari Ferris; Spring Plant Fair illustration by Lizzy Stewart; 7 Wilbury Crescent, Hove by Charles Burleigh (1869-1956), image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

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THE GARDEN MUSEUM NEWS….

THE GARDEN MUSEUM, the U.K. British Flowers Week 2023 The Garden Museum’s annual British Flowers Week exhibition is back this summer, championing British-grown flowers, sustainable floristry and the immense talent in floral design found across the country. We’ve hand-picked five of the most exciting florists working in Britain today to build immersive floral installations around the museum on the theme ‘New Beginnings’. And we are thrilled to reveal this year’s line-up! Botanical Tales Lucy Vail Floristry Mahal Kita Flowers SAGE Yinari The week will also include a Friday Late and a panel discussion with the florists hosted by Shane Connolly. Find out more about this year’s florists and book your visit on our website now!  8-12 June 2023 British Flowers Week 2023 New Talk! An Evening with Luciano Giubbilei We are delighted to welcome renowned garden designer Luciano Giubbilei back to the Garden Museum to talk about his recent projects, including having his work featured in The Art of the Garden, airing on Sky Arts in May. Twenty-five years after starting life as a garden designer, Luciano Giubbilei has finally created a garden in the country in which he was born. Having been brought up in the walled city of Siena, he jumped at the chance to create a stunning garden around a villa whose views are of a Tuscan landscape unchanged for centuries. Tues 2 May, 7pm £20 Standard £15 Friends, Young Fronds £10 Livestream Book tickets Horticultural Trainee Blog: A week in La Petraia, Tuscany As her year as our Horticultural Trainee comes to a close, Caroline Cathcart shares her final garden placement, far away from our Lambeth patch in La Petraia, Tuscany: “High up in the Tuscan hills in Chianti sits La Petraia, a secluded estate that looks out over a vast rural landscape. The surrounding vineyards roll into dense woodland, where the bare branches of the downy oak, blanched to a blue-green pallor with lichen, appear from a distance like the flowers of the smoke bush, Cotinus coggygria, amassing on the hillsides in glaucous swathes tinged with pink…” Keep reading New Talk! What Gardeners Grow How do gardeners arrive at their favourite plants? Do they go for the beauty makers, the workhorses of the garden, the ones that attract the pollinators, or the plant they first grew as a wide-eyed child? What Gardeners Grow, a new book published by Bloom, collects into one encyclopedic volume the most treasured plants (and the stories behind them) of more than 250 gardeners. In this talk, book contributors discuss what elevates a plant to ‘favourite’ status. And how our favourite plants might be changing as our gardens, climate, politics and environment continue to be in flux. Joining the panel to share their favourite plants are Matt Collins (Head Gardener at the Garden Museum), Errol Fernandes (Head of Horticulture at the Horniman Museum), Sara Venn (Founder of Incredible Edible Bristol), Juliet Sargeant (Garden Designer and RHS judge), and chair Zena Alkayat (founder of Bloom) in conversation. Tues 16 May, 7pm £15 Adult £10 Friends, Students, Young Fronds £10 Livestream Book tickets Lunchtime Talk | Madoo: The Making of an American Garden We are joined by Alejandro Saralegui, Executive Director of the Madoo Conservancy, to discover the story of a unique American garden. Madoo is a magical garden that had its genesis in the late 1960s on a fallow farm field in Sagaponack, in the Hamptons. Its founder Robert Dash, a self-taught gardener and painter who was also a noted poet, experimented as he went along, turning Madoo into a nexus of the American art and poetry worlds. He often described the garden as having English bones and American flesh, and Dash’s interpretations of historic garden periods fill the two-acre site, where Rosemary Verey’s influence can be clearly felt in the potager based on a drawing of her own at Barnsley House. Alejandro’s talk will include archival and present day photography of the garden as well as Dash’s own paintings that illustrate Madoo. Tues 2 May, 12pm £15 Standard £10 Friends, Young Fronds Book tickets Object of the Week: The Willow Grove, Great Bardfield by Charles Mahoney The same landscape view of the Willow Grove at Great Bardfield was also painted by Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden who lived in the Essex village. The group of friends were all keen gardeners and regularly swapped cuttings and seeds. This painting is on display in our current exhibition Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden until 4 June. Presented in partnership with Liss Llewellyn, works are available to purchase in aid of our education and exhibitions programmes. For a price list and further details email christina@gardenmuseum.org.uk.  Book a visit Images: JamJar Flowers installation at British Flowers Week 2021 (c) Rona Wheeldon; All for Love installation at British Flowers Week 2019 (c) Courage & Dash; Tuscany Garden courtesy of Luciano Giubbilei; La Petraia (c) C.E. Cathcart; What Gardeners Grow (c) Bloom; Madoo (c) Alejandro Saralegui; The Willow Grove, Great Bardfield by Charles Mahoney ((1903-1968), image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

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THE GARDEN MUSEUM NEWS, the U. K.

The Garden Museum News 🌿

Branch Out: Free events and activities at the Garden Museum! We are delighted to announce Branch Out, our new programme of free events and activities exploring gardening, art, floristry, plant science, history, design and more! Starting in April, join us on Thursdays for free talks, tours, workshops and performances in our historic nave. Branch Out has been made possible thanks to funding from Arts Council England. From seed swaps with our gardening team, to curator-guided tours of our collection, and nature-inspired art and craft workshops, try something new every Thursday at our free Branch Out activities. The programme will take place in the Garden Museum’s Grade II* listed deconsecrated church nave, parts of which date back to the 14th century, and visitors will be able to explore one of London’s most fascinating historic buildings. No need to book, just show up! Explore our free Branch Out activities Talk | Ideas for a Greener London Inspired by the work of writer, urban theorist, and activist Jane Jacobs, this panel discussion chaired by Evan Davis will present ideas from architects, academics, landscape designers and gardeners on how they envision a brighter, greener, and better future for London. Speakers include designer of public spaces Alex Arestis on the importance of street trees; Dr Morag Rose on why we need walkable cities; geographer Oli Mould on turning golf courses into community gardens; and George Hudson on the connected thinking required between gardeners, designers and decision makers. This talk is part of our Jane Jacobs Dayprogramme.  Tues 4 May, 7pm £10 Adult, £8 Friends £5 Student / Young Fronds £5 Livestream Buy tickets Visions of Welfare Conference We are pleased to be hosting this day of discussion as part of Visions of Welfare: a three-day international conference discussing the role of women in the creation of the spaces of the post-war Welfare States. Presentations will consider the role of women in the formation of key spaces in the Welfare State, looking beyond individual achievements and professional boundaries. Across a day of talks, the conference will explore who forms a built environment and emphasise and celebrate the diversity of women’s practices. Visions of Welfare is co-hosted by the Women of the Welfare Landscape Project, the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB), and the Women in Danish Architecture project. Mon 15 May, 9.30am – 5.30pm £60 Standard, £45 Student £25 Livestream Book tickets Visions of Welfare Conference Talk: Greening the Desert Landscape architect Diana Armstrong Bell gained a unique perspective on her discipline whilst working in the Middle East in the 1980s. She learnt the fundamentals of greening the desert from women like Grace Kirkwood, consultant landscape architect for Kenzo Tange, and applied these ideas at the Arabian Gulf University, Bahrain – even setting up a plant nursery on site. In this talk, Armstrong Bell will share the stories and inspiration that she drew from her experiences working in the Middle East,  joined in conversation by landscape architect, historian and horticulturist Karen Fitzsimon. This talk is part of the Visions of Welfare Conference but standalone tickets can be booked below. £10 Standard £5 Friend/Student/Young Frond £5 Livestream Book tickets Plant of the Week: Corydalis By Matt Collins, Head Gardener Some botanical names, when you type them, feel as easy on the fingers as they do spoken aloud. For me, ‘corydalis’ is one of them. The letters flow in natural swirls. The word originates from the Greek ‘korydalis’, meaning ‘crested lark’, and was attributed to the flower for its similarity in shape to the head of this common Eurasian bird: the narrow, downward face of the bloom; the backwards flick of its spur. And, rather than point to one single variety, as I have done here in the past, I thought I’d group a few growing at the Museum in celebration of their all too often unsung spring efforts. As with the majority of my springtime favourites, corydalis are for the most part woodlanders, flowering around the base of trees in the short window between winter’s end and canopy leaf break; after this they vanish. There are exceptions that prefer the contrasting conditions of sun and free-draining soil (notably the feral garden escapee, C. lutea, now reclassified Pseudofumaria lutea); and, ultimately, it can be quite hard pinpointing exactly which soil type and conditions a corydalis is likely to thrive in, so often it can come down to trial and error. However, for pot displays, I find them completely charming. Their blooms coincide neatly with the spring bulbs of March and April, delivering complementary accents of eye catching colour, be it the cool pink of C. ‘Beth Evans’, the electric blue of C. ‘Pere David’ or the luminous yellow of personal favourite, C. cheilanthifolia, whose fern-like foliage is a wonder in itself. At the Museum, I keep our corydalis in their pots after flowering, allowing them to die back and dry out a little in a shady spot out of view, and then repot them in late winter for the coming display.

Explore our gardens Elsewhere… Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism at Dulwich Picture Gallery This spring, Dulwich Picture Gallery will present the first major UK exhibition of Berthe Morisot since 1950. In partnership with the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, it will bring together 30 of the Impressionist’s masterpieces from international collections to reveal the artist as a trailblazer of the movement. A founding member of the Impressionist group, Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was known for her swiftly painted glimpses of contemporary life and intimate domestic scenes. She featured prominently in the Impressionist exhibitions and defied social norms to become one of the movement’s most influential figures. 31 March – 10 September 2023 Find out more Images: Branch Out design by Han Valentine; South Bank roof garden photo courtesy George Hudson; Design offices of the Ministry of Metallurgy and Mechanical Engineering, Budapest (1957) (c) Martin Kurutz, Fortepan; Arabic tent illustration (c) Diana Armstrong Bell; Corydalis photos (c) Matt Collins; Berthe Morisot, At the Ball, 1875 © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

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New Garden Visit! Glorious Gardens of Gloucestershire This new addition to our summer 2023 Garden Visits programme will take us to the Cotswolds home of horticulturist Catherine FitzGerald, then onto nearby Marshfield where landscape designer Mary Keen will welcome us to her beautiful ‘burgage plot’ garden (pictured), a compact atmospheric plant-filled space which she started six years ago. After lunch we visit historic Badminton House to be welcomed by the Duchess of Beaufort for a private tour of the magnificent Grade I gardens, as well as the gardens at Well Cottage on the estate. Mon 3 July £175 Standard, £160 Friends Book tickets Book Extract | The Cut Flower Sourcebook: Rachel Siegfried Ahead of her book launch on Tuesday 4 April, we are delighted to share this extract from flower grower Rachel Siegfried’s new book The Cut Flower Sourcebook: “I was first, and hope last to be, a gardener, it was an unanticipated combination of circumstances that led me to do professionally something I did once only as a relaxation, and much as I love doing it, I don’t like the groove to be too deep.” Constance Spry, 1940 Chancing upon this quote by Constance Spry, I found it so relatable to my own experience. I too see myself primarily as a gardener with a love of plants and a deep connection to nature, so my floral style comes from that perspective. Working in the garden and walking my dogs in the surrounding countryside are my sources of inspiration and my design philosophy is simply about bringing some of the outside indoors. My path to becoming a flower farmer and florist has been a meandering one, but there has always been a garden at the heart of it. The first was my granny’s when I was child. It was her favourite place to be and it quickly became mine too, soothing and grounding me after my parents’ separation. Twenty years later, I had put my emotionally restorative experience of a garden into practice and become a garden designer for the NHS… Keep reading New talk! Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden Join Liss Llewellyn’s Gallery Manager and art historian George Richards, for a talk that will delve into the key themes of our latest exhibition, Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden, focusing particularly on the ‘public’ aspect and the rise of urban garden painting during the Edwardian and Interwar periods. Discover the work of the Camden Town Group – who recorded the scabrous façades and shabby gardens of the City – before charting the surge in images of public recreation, as artists painted pleasure parks and funfairs, and sought to capture these fresh, modern experiences. George will consider these urban views amidst the popularity of flâneuse novels such as Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs Dalloway, and the vogue for ‘street haunting’, as Woolf referred to it, could be said to have found its pictorial form during this period, as artists delighted in painting quirky facades, secret courtyards, unexpected green spaces and historic squares. Tues 18 April, 7pm £15 Standard, £10 Friends, Young Fronds Book tickets Exhibition catalogue | Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden Available now in our online bookshop! This catalogue to accompany our new exhibition includes a foreword by Garden Museum Curator Emma House, an essay by Liss Llewellyn gallery manager George Richards, and is illustrated with all of the artworks from the exhibition, plus many more. £15 Buy the catalogue Object of the Week: Andrew Lawson’s photographic slides for Brilliant Gardens By Alice Ridgway, Archivist The Garden Museum is home to the collection of Andrew Lawson, the photographer: 20,000 slides and transparencies but also the correspondence and records which detail how his unique eye captured the nation’s garden from the 1980s to the present day, from Highgrove to designs by his friends Penelope Hobhouse and Rosemary Verey. His first books were homages to the social history of London’s streets and he was particularly fond of the smaller gardens across the UK ‘upon which our just reputation as a nation of great gardeners is based.’ Brilliant Gardens was published at the beginning of Lawson’s photography career in 1986. It celebrates the English gardens which ‘never fail to catch the attention of passers-by.’ It also acts as a record of the small and often transient garden masterpieces that represent horticultural works of art, admired throughout the world as marvels of dedication, devotion and design. In a new series for our Object of the Week feature, I will be sharing some of my favourites from Brilliant Gardens collection of photographic slides that now reside in our archive. To begin, I have chosen two gnome-related photos with accompanying captions from the book written by Candida Lycett Green. For good measure, there is a photograph by Lawson of the Gnome Reserve in Devon, established in 1979 by Ann Atkin. The reserve holds more than 2,000 gnomes earning its place in the Guinness Book of World Records. The image above shows a garden belonging to Mr and Mrs L. Hudson of Deddington, Oxfordshire: “Leonard Hudson, an Austin Rover factory worker and his wife Sybil, have lived in ‘Knotty Ash’ for around 20 years. ‘My wife was the inspiration for this garden as she so loves to be outdoors. We find that the pleasure it gives to us both by doing it in our spare time is well worth it. Many people call in for a friendly chat and a few tales of their own gardens. The smiles on the children’s faces when they see the gnomes are worth everything.’ The front garden at ‘Knotty Ash’ is filled with over 300 gnomes and animals which get placed differently after each weekly mowing of the lawn.”

Keep reading Film | Andrew Lawson: A Portrait The Garden Museum produced this film in 2021 as a portrait of the great garden photographer Andrew Lawson. Film by Tom Piper.  Explore our Film Library Images: Mary Keen’s garden (c) Jason Ingram; Rachel Siegfried (c) Eva Nemeth; Gilbert Spencer (1892-1979), The Balcony c.1928, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn; Catalogue cover image Evelyn Dunbar (1906-1960), Invitation to the Garden, c. 1938, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn; Andrew Lawson’s photographic slides for Brilliant Gardens, The Archive of Garden Design

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New talk! Tom Massey: Resilient Garden Tom Massey is one of the leading designers of his generation and his new book, RHS Resilient Garden (published by DK in April) is a climate emergency call to action for us all to garden more sustainably. To celebrate the publication, hear Tom and some of the book’s expert contributors discuss the important issue of climate-resilient gardening. How can we design our gardens and green spaces to become more adaptable in a warming climate? How resilient are gardens, in the face of extreme weather events such as heatwaves and drought or excessive rainfall and flooding? Why should we be planting our own food forests, adopting green roof and swale planting, harvesting rainwater, or adding hügelkultur mounds? What are the best plants to cool the air and trap harmful pollutants? The evening will be chaired by Chris Young, who will welcome guests Tayshan Hayden-Smith, Dr Tijana Blanusa, Dr Hayley Jones, and Thomas Rainer on stage, joining Tom Massey for a panel discussion on resilient gardening. Tues 11 April, 7pm £15 Standard, £10 Friends/Young Fronds £10 Livestream Book tickets Jane Jacobs Day 2023 Join us for the Garden Museum’s inaugural Jane Jacobs Day, a day of activities celebrating the renowned urban theorist, writer, and activist Jane Jacobs, most famously known for her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). The day will include a Jane Walk in our local neighbourhood, a community workshop, and an evening panel discussion on London’s future, to commemorate the outstanding contribution Jane Jacobs made to urban studies, sociology, economics, and activism. Full programme coming soon, but tickets are available now for the evening talk! Ideas for a Greener London Chaired by Evan Davis, this panel discussion will explore how to envision a brighter, greener, and better future for London. Speakers include Architect Alex Arestis on the development of an urban arboretum; academic Dr Morag Rose on walking together to shape the planet; Oli Mould on the futures of golf courses and writer George Hudson on why utilities are the problem… Thurs 4 May, 7pm £10 Adult, £8 Friend, £8 Student, £8 Unemployed £10 Livestream Book tickets Plant of the Week: Fritillaria verticillata By Matt Collins, Head Gardener As anyone who follows my Instagram account will know, my fixation with fritillaries began in earnest while living at Benton End in Suffolk, where the appearance of various species once grown by Benton’s renowned artist-gardener, Sir Cedric Morris, still appear sporadically in the rough grass, decades after his death. Going out in the dewy spring mornings to spot dainty, elegant and sometimes curious fritillaries half hidden in the walled garden there — during the strange quiet of the pandemic — will forever remain one of my most favourite gardening experiences. Not least as it tuned my eye to the nuances and natural appeal of species bulbs more generally. This week, while the cold weather creeps on into spring, stinging hands and stiffening boots, I have rejoiced at the indifference shown by our clumps of Fritillaria verticillata— a completely magnetising species fritillary from Japan whose multi-headed, cream-white blooms appear to have almost doubled in spread and size since last year, despite the chill temperatures. Planted in the Museum courtyard as a little drift last April, I staked the emerging shoots this winter with little berberis prunings (sturdily pronged and advantageously sharp), to give its slender, tendril-clad stems something to cling to. Here at the damper, partially sunny end of the garden they have now risen to well above two feet, dangling as many as five flowers each: qualities that make verticillata (which means ‘whorled’, in reference to the arrangement of its leaves around the stem) a fantastic garden plant for spring. Verticillata wasn’t among the fritillaries I encountered at Benton End, but I came to know it around the same time during a visit to a garden once owned by late garden writer Tony Venison. Venison died in 2019, but for many years was a frequent visitor to (and great chronicler of) Benton End. So there is a small chance the fritillary is linked; if not given by Morris (who was famously generous with plants) then perhaps discussed with him in the garden. Upon seeing it I was instantly charmed: if the height, floral abundance and butterfly antennae-like tendrils weren’t captivating enough, you lift the little pendent heads to reveal an exquisite, blood-red crosshatch beneath the petals. If you’re visiting the museum, I encourage you to wander out and look.

About our gardens Otros Vinos at the Garden Café Friday nights at the Garden Café are back from next week, and to celebrate we’ve invited one of our wine suppliers and good friends of the Café, the excellent Otros Vinos, to join us and pick the wine list for the evening. Focusing on low-intervention wine makers, Otros Vinos use lesser known grape varieties from some of the more obscure regions of France and Spain. Head chef Myles has put together a Mediterranean inspired menu for the evening to compliment the list. Spots are limited so please book online in advance. Friday 24 March, from 6pm Book a table Images: Tom Massey (c) Wax London; Jane Jacobs, chairman of the Comm. to save the West Village holds up documentary evidence at press conference at Lions Head Restaurant at Hudson & Charles Sts (1961), New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress; Fritillaria verticillata

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Joy Larkcom: The Queen of Vegetables Vegetable growing pioneer and writer Joy Larkcom is affectionately known by many as ‘The Queen of Vegetables’, as she introduced so many varieties to the UK that we know and love today. These include Lollo Rosso lettuce, Chioggia beetroot, and Perella lettuce, which she first encountered on her “Grand Vegetable Tour” around Europe in 1976. Her most well-known contribution is the introduction of the cut-and-come-again harvesting method, which provides the ‘baby leaves’ in bags which are so ubiquitous today. So if you’ve ever bought a bag of mixed baby salad leaves from the supermarket, you’ve got Joy to thank! Joy also had a fascination with Chinese vegetables, experimenting with them in her own garden for many years before visiting China, Japan, and Taiwan on research trips in the 1980s. In a new archive display, we’ve delved into Joy’s personal archives (which are held at the Garden Museum) for highlights from her Asian vegetable research, including photographs, correspondence, research notes, gardening tools and seed catalogues. Find out more Talk | Rachel Siegfried: The Cut Flower Sourcebook Flower grower Rachel Siegfried is joined in conversation by Clare Foster, editor of House & Garden, to celebrate the launch of Rachel’s new book The Cut Flower Sourcebook. Growing your own flowers for cutting brings the pleasures of the season indoors and cuts out the air miles associated with many shop-bought flowers. Founder of Green and Gorgeous, a flower farm and floral design studio in Oxfordshire, Rachel will be sharing her recommendations for the best perennials and woody plants for arranging – whether your goal is to have something to pick from your garden each week of the year or start a cut flower business! Tues 4 April, 7pm £20 Standard, £15 Friends / Young Fronds £10 Livestream Book tickets Lucian Freud Raffle Thank you to everyone who entered our fundraising Lucian Freud raffle! The raffle is now closed, and we are delighted to have raised over £6500 thanks to all your entries! This week our front of house volunteer Jenny helped us pick the random winners, with one lucky entrant winning an exclusive private tour of Lucian Freud’s art studio. Second place won a zimmerlinde cut from Freud’s own plant (pictured here with Jenny), and third place won a framed photograph taken by Howard Sooley in Freud’s studio. All funds raised from the raffle will help us continue our exhibitions, education and community programmes.  Support the Garden Museum Plant of the Week: Sweet violet (Viola odorata) By Matt Collins, Head Gardener Next up among the garden weeds I feel compelled to pot and display alongside the more showy cultivated varieties — particularly those boasting a high tolerance of shade — is the sweet violet, Viola odorata. Who doesn’t love violets? And who would consider them undeserving of a pot, however commonplace? The foliage is surprisingly evergreen, and the flowers, when they arrive to conclusively declare spring, are true to both their common and botanical names: sweetly odorous, and also somehow intricately beautiful yet unassuming and discrete. But there is an aura of the ancient in the presence of violets that seems to endear them further and almost stop you in your tracks, whether encountered in the garden, in woodland or below the rural hedgerow. Violets have a magnetism, and have for centuries been woven into European culture and tradition, from almanacs, folklore and nursery rhymes to perfumes, cosmetics and wine. Consequently, you weed them in the garden with more reverence — or superstitious caution — than you might a bittercress or dandelion. In advance of a new garden project beginning at the Museum relating to herbal and homeopathic plants, I have been reading John Gerard again recently, the Elizabethan physician whose illustrated plants catalogue of 1597 became the most revered of all herbals, historic and modern. Gerard’s writing was essentially the root of all future garden writing, in its blending of scientific and horticultural observation with rich, near-hyperbolic description (sound familiar?). Turning to his page on violets, this winning combination can be seen in full flare: while the author touches on distribution and seasonality (‘floures for the most part appeare in March, at the farthest in Aprill’), and on the medicinal applications of the day (as an anti-inflammatory for the lungs and for treating ‘hoarsenesse of the chest’), his description really goes to town(e), praising them ‘…not only because the mind conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling those most odoriferous floures, but also … gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all, chiefest beauty, and most excellent grace…’. Getting excited, he continues: ‘…they admonish and stirre up a man to that which is comely and honest; for through their beauty and colour, and exquisit forme, do bring the remembrance of honestie and all kindes of virtues: for it would be an unseemly and filthy thing for him that doth look upon and handle faire and beautiful things to have his mind not faire, but filthy and deformed’. So perhaps I am right in registering a sense of venerability about the otherwise humble sweet violet, and right to elevate it from uninvited guest to potted display status. Naturally, ‘odoriferous’ has now entered my ‘must use’ list of garden writer’s adjectives…

About our gardens Opening soon! Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden Our next exhibition opens Weds 22 March! Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden will bring together over thirty works by Modern British artists who found inspiration in green spaces at a time when many artists were retreating to planting and painting in their gardens. Celebrating the art of both private sanctuaries and public green spaces of London, the exhibition will explore intimate depictions of gardens, greenhouses, parks and city squares by artists of the interwar era including Charles Mahoney, Evelyn Dunbar, Eric Ravilious and Ithell Colquhoun. This exhibition is presented in partnership with Liss Llewellyn, and the works will be available for purchase, in aid of the Museum’s educational and community programmes. 22 March – 4 June Friends go free Book your visit Images: Greens in a field photo courtesy Joy Larkcom, taken research trip around China, Japan and Taiwan, Joy Larkcom typing at Capo Caccia, Sardinia, Italy (24 April 1977); Cut flowers, The Cut Flower Sourcebook photo (c) Eva Nemeth; Sweet violet (c) Matt Collins; Evelyn Dunbar (1906-1960), Invitation to the Garden, c. 1938, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn

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