The Garden Museum….MONDAY News…the U.K.

South Wood Farm (c) Jason Ingram Garden Visits 2023 We are delighted to announce this year’s Garden Visits! The programme takes us to some of the country’s most exquisite and inspiring gardens, with exclusive tours and talks hosted by some of the owners and designers. Our Garden Visits always sell quickly – so don’t hesitate if one catches your eye! All our visits outside London offer transport from a local train station to the gardens, as well as lunch and refreshments all included in the ticket price. Become a Friend to enjoy discounted tickets and priority booking for next year’s garden visits.  See all Garden Visits Outstanding gardens in the High Sussex Weald Highlands and Brightling Down Farm This morning we visit Highlands, a beautiful country garden with commanding views across the Sussex Weald to the Ashdown Forest. This eight-acre garden wraps around a 15th century Wealden hall house with a 17th century threshing barn. The owners have a wildlife-friendly approach, with areas of wildflower meadow and a natural pond, plus hot beds, a dry bed and a woodland garden. Our guide will be head gardener Chris Brown. After a seasonal lunch at a local inn, we will drive to Brightling Down Farm (pictured above), where the garden has been designed for owners Val and Peter Stephens by talented design duo Ian Smith and Debbie Roberts of Acres Wild. The brief was to “make a garden that looks as though it has always been here” and that has been completely fulfilled: the sculpted landscape design, interconnected ponds and waterfalls, tranquil planting and use of reclaimed materials make it look timeless. Tues 30 May £175 Standard, £160 Friends Book tickets Contrasting country gardens in Devon Silver Street Farm and South Wood Farm This visit takes us to Silver Street Farm (pictured above), the beautiful three-acre country garden of landscape designer Alasdair Cameron and his wife Tor on the edge of the Blackdown Hills, featured in magazines including House & Garden and Country Living. Ranged around a beautifully restored Georgian farmhouse and characterful outbuildings, the garden is designed as a space in which to experiment with plant combinations and as a relaxed family garden. We then drive the short distance to South Wood Farm, a very special five-acre country garden designed by Arne Maynard. We will be hosted by the owner, Professor Clive Potter and guided by head gardener Lewis O’Brien. Wrapped around an ancient thatched yeoman’s farmhouse, this is a garden of great atmosphere, bringing together ingenious herbaceous planting with topiary, wildflower meadows, orchard and kitchen garden. The result is an unforgettable sense of place. Tues 6 June £175 Standard, £160 Friends Book tickets Creative, sustainable flower arranging with Lucy Vail Floriston Hall Flower Farm and Tinkers Green Farm This morning we will be the guests of mother and daughter Amanda and Lucy Vail at Floriston Flower Farm (pictured above) on the Suffolk/Essex borders. Acclaimed floral designer Lucy specialises in seasonal, sustainable installations for weddings and events using predominantly British flowers grown by Amanda in a one-acre flower farm she started in lockdown in 2020. We will enjoy an exclusive floristry demonstration by Lucy, and explore the rest of the gardens at Floriston Hall, where the roses should be at their peak. After lunch we will travel the short distance to Tinkers Green Farm, home of Peter and Denny Swete, where garden designer Denny, one of our Garden Visit organisers for the museum, has kindly agreed to open her own garden for us. There is a mix of exuberance and formality in the borders, as well as a verdant decorative potager and Denny is passionate about encouraging wildlife so uses no sprays to control pests. Behind the 16th century cottage, Denny has created long herbaceous borders that ripple with strong colour and there is a shady and restful courtyard garden, planted with cool greens and creams. Weds 14 June £175 Standard, £160 Friends Book tickets Delightful town gardens in Oxfordshire The Lodge, Waynes Close and The Old Vicarage and the Burford Garden Company Today we will visit three private town gardens in the heart of Burford. Our first stop is Sue Ashton’s country-house garden at The Lodge (pictured above). Walled on two sides behind an elegant 18th century Cotswold stone house, Sue’s half-acre garden – with a beautiful Victorian glasshouse at its heart – has something new to admire at every turn. A short walk will bring us to Shirley Russell’s small secluded town garden of Waynes Close. From a paved terrace behind the house – which dates from the late 1600s and was modernised in 1910 in the Arts and Crafts style – the lawn sweeps upwards to join a loggia, surrounded by flowering climbers and wall shrubs. In the afternoon we visit Jean Gray’s equally secluded one-acre walled garden at The Old Vicarage, which dates from the 1400s with an elegant Georgian façade, followed by a visit to meet the team at the Burford Garden Company. Weds 21 June £175 Standard, £160 Friends Book tickets A magical, wildlife friendly garden on the Thames Terraces At the home of garden designer John Little This very special day has been devised for Garden Museum guests who are looking to attract more wildlife into their garden. John Little is a maverick garden designer, brimming with groundbreaking ideas, who will show us how anyone can incorporate his concepts in a beautiful, design-led way into any garden setting. In Hilldrop, his own garden in Laindon, Essex, he will show us how to create a low-maintenance, flower-filled garden that not only brings pleasure to people but also embraces and encourages biodiversity. Features include green roofs, ponds and skilfully designed habitat panels and planters. Hilldrop was recently cited by Nigel Dunnett as “a new iconic garden that people would still be talking about in 20 years”. John is well-known for his incredibly inspiring low-impact landscapes, demonstrating how even the most unpromising soils – stony, arid and low in fertility – can be turned to advantage. We will be joined by entomologist James McGill and we will also visit the community gardens at the nearby Essex Wildlife Trust nature discovery park. Fri 30 June £220 Standard, £200 Friends Book tickets A fascinating tour of The Newt in Somerset Hadspen, Castle Cary, Somerset Join us for an exclusive guided tour of the gardens and many features at The Newt in Somerset, arguably one of the most exciting horticultural projects to have emerged in the UK in the last decade. The horticultural heritage of the gardens is well known, thanks in no small part to garden guru Penelope Hobhouse, who gardened here at Hadspen House for over a decade until 1979.  We will be in the capable hands of Arthur Cole, Head of Programmes, who will introduce us to the parabola walled garden, cascade ponds, colour gardens, cottage fernery, produce area and woodland. We will also have time to visit the interactive exhibition space The Story of Gardening, explore the fascinating life of bees in the Beezantium, and visit the marl pit with its naturalistic planting and grotto. Our day includes lunch in the Garden Café. Thurs 7 September £175 Standard, £160 Friends Book tickets Splendid old hall gardens in Cheshire Stretton Old Hall and Broxton Old Hall Today we are in Cheshire to visit two splendid gardens surrounding quintessential old hall houses. Our first stop is Stretton Old Hall, Tilston (pictured above), where the garden covers just over five acres. The creation of owner Ken Roscoe, an architectural designer, it has been described as contemporary classic in style and “a masterpiece of considered design”. After lunch at a local restaurant, we will travel to Broxton Old Hall, a ten acre garden which has been compared to a mini Highgrove. There are formal parterres, an ornamental lake, cut flower and vegetable gardens, a wildflower meadow and woodland. It beautifully combines both formal and fun elements such as a multi-storey treehouse made from timber milled on site and a hobbit house with a living roof. We will be met by head gardener Andrew Woolley, and Riccardo Armitage, head of Produce and Formal, will show us the walled kitchen garden and cutting garden, plus the herb garden designed by Jekka McVicar. Weds 13 September £175 Standard, £160 Friends Book tickets Images: Brightling Down Farm walled garden © Acres Wild; Silver Street Farm © Jason Ingram; Lucy and Amanda Vail at Floriston Hall Flower Farm © Mark Crick; The Lodge © Clive Nichols; John Little’s garden © Sarah Cuttle; The Newt formal garden aerial view © The Newt in Somerset; Stretton Old Hall © Joe Wainwright Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

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THE GARDEN MUSUEM…the U.K…..”special attention to…”the blue silk sash”

Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden New exhibition coming soon! Our next exhibition, 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 Find out more and book Alice Vincent: Why Women Grow Book Extract We are delighted to be hosting the official launch of garden writer Alice Vincent’s new book ‘Why Women Grow’, a major narrative exploration of the relationship between women and the soil. Tickets to attend in-person are almost sold out, but livestream tickets are still available. Ahead of the event on Tues 28 February, this week we are sharing an exclusive extract from the book: “In the middle of this stuck year [2020], I opened a green notebook and wrote down a list of names. I listed the women I wanted to speak to – strangers, most of them – about their gardens and about their lives; women whose work had interested me. Because women have always gardened, but our stories have been buried with our work. For centuries we have learned the soil’s secrets. We have ushered herbs from the ground and dried them for healing; we have braided seeds into our hair to preserve legacies even when the future looks bloody and uncertain; we have silently made the world more beautiful, too often without acknowledgement. I wanted to try and change that. I wanted to see the gardens that women made. I wanted to know what had encouraged them to go out, work the soil, plant seeds and nurture them, even when so many other responsibilities sat upon their shoulders. I wanted to know how their lives had taken them to this place, and what it brought them now they were here…” Keep reading Job Opportunity: Family Learning Officer Our Learning Team is recruiting for a part-time Family Learning Officer, a new role made possible thanks to our new Arts Council funding as a National Portfolio Organisation. The successful candidate will become the fourth member of our Learning team, in a role created to develop our learning programme for both local families and those from further afield. Our aim is to engage and inspire children and adults of different ages and backgrounds to enjoy, participate and experience the Garden Museum through hands-on and sensory activities, stories, play and digital, all with a common theme linked to gardening and the natural world. Apply by Monday 13 March Find out more Plant of the Week: Fatsia polycarpa By Matt Collins, Head Gardener Three endearing qualities set Fatsia polycarpa aside from its near ubiquitous cousin, F. japonica. Four, in fact, if you include a slightly more robust hardiness. Unlike japonica, whose coastal origin bestowed its leaves with a waxy, leather-like texture, polycarpa’s foliage is by contrast relatively sheen-free; the mat option, in place of gloss. It is also enormously variable, the highly decorative palmate lobes by turns elongated, narrow and curvaceous. The plant is remarkably shade-tolerant, too: it is a natural born woodlander, at home in the dim of the understory. For us this comes in handy, considering our gardens for the most part lie in the shadow of tall buildings and towering London plane trees. Growing at the foot of a large mulberry tree, our polycarpa is positioned in perhaps the most shady (and dry!) spot of all, and yet it thrives. In fact, in late spring each year I saw off a good 2-3 weighty stems, just to reduce the congestion that results from the plant’s immense vigour. Fatsia polycarpa came to us from Crûg Farm nursery in North Wales, home to Sue and Bleddyn Wynn-Jones — beef farmers turned globetrotting, modern-day plant collectors — and many other weird and wonderful plants. Landscape designer Dan Pearson had approached Crûg Farm while seeking interesting additions to his design for the Museum courtyard (a ‘garden of treasures’, in the spirit of the Tradescants entombed within the courtyard itself). Among the offerings came this beautiful, multi-stemmed evergreen shrub grown from seed gathered by the Wynn-Joneses in mountainous Taiwan; one of numerous trips they have made to the island as licensed plant collectors. Sue told me they now have a sizable polycarpa colony in the garden at Crûg Farm, growing under oak trees, and that these differ from the mass produced form in the distinct curvaceousness of their leaves. For the sense of calm this evergreen instills when sat beneath it on the courtyard bench, Fatsia polycarpa could be ‘plant of the week’ year round. It is at this moment in late winter, however, that the magnificent inflorescences appear: tall spikes of clustered white flowers held bright and glowing just above the dark foliage. For enthusiasts so inclined, the Crûg Farm website is an enchanted forest of spectacular foliage; the nursery itself is, I’m told, pure joy for the horticulturally inquisitive. I’m still eagerly awaiting my first visit. About our gardens Object of the Week: Sash for the Order of the Free Gardeners (c.1850-1900) The first societies to protect the secret knowledge of gardeners, and individual welfare, were founded in the 17th century. By the 19th century the Order had incorporated many of the rituals of Freemasonry but continued to be independent. The blue silk moire ceremonial sash of the Ancient Order of Free Gardeners is edged in red and trimmed with gold filigree wire tassels and braid. The sash is embellished at the wearer’s shoulder with a gold and dark blue star, with a set square, compass and gardening knife design at its centre. Also attached to the sash is a black and white lithographed silk panel depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden which is considered to be a central symbol of their Order. The letters A, N and S are the initials of Adam, Noah, Solomon who were considered to be founding ‘Gardeners’. O probably represents the symbol of the olive tree. The panel contains many other symbols of the Order, including the set square, compass and grafting or pruning knife at the base of the left-hand column and the bee hive at the base of the right. The Order shares many symbols in common with the Order of Freemasonry, though it is older. The panel was made in Glasgow by Charles Lang who was also a supplier of Masonic regalia. It is thought to date from the end of the 19th century. Explore our collection online Three weeks left! Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits Only three weeks remain to see Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits, the first exhibition to explore Freud’s frequent yet lesser-known paintings of plants. Freud was not a gardener but had a close and respectful relationship with plants, from rarely-seen drawings from his childhood in Berlin to his garden in Notting Hill, and the straggly potted plants that followed him from home to home throughout his life. This exhibition explores why and when he chose to paint plants, and not people; yet how he granted them the same gritty realness as his human subjects. Open until 5 March Buy the catalogue Book your visit Images: Evelyn Dunbar (1906-1960), Conservatory at the Cedars, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn; Alice Vincent (c) Giles Smith; Children’s gardening workshop at the Garden Museum photo by Graham Lacdao; Fatsia polycarpa (c) Matt Collins; Museum visitors in Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits photo by Graham Lacdao Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

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