Garden Museum

22/03/2023

📣 Open now! Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden

Why did so many artists retreat to painting and planting in their gardens between the two wars? And why was there such a flourishing interest in exploring parks and public green spaces?

Discover intimate depictions of garden sanctuaries, greenhouses, pockets of green in the city, and favourite plant specimens by Modern British artists including Evelyn Dunbar, Charles Mahoney, Eric Ravilious and many more.

🗓️ Open till 4 June, and the works are available for purchase in aid of our education and community programmes.

Book your visit: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/private-and-public-finding-the-modern-british-garden/

Presented in partnership with Liss Llewellyn

Image: Gilbert Spencer (1892-1979), The Balcony c.1928, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn

20/03/2023

Joy Larkcom: The Queen of Vegetables 🥬🥦🥕

Ever bought a bag of mixed baby salad leaves in the supermarket? You’ve got Joy to thank for that!

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 which 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 in supermarkets today.

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 display in the museum, 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.

🗓️ On display until 23 May: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/joy-larkcom-the-queen-of-vegetables/

07/03/2023

Plant of the Week: "Ming fern" (Asparagus retrofractus)

Head Gardener Matt Collins✍️

“Without question, asparagus ferns are among the big hitters of the houseplant resurgence of this last decade — South African members of the Asparagus genus, whose bold yet delicate fern-like foliage stretches, twines and creeps through living-rooms the country over.

Chief among them is Asparagus setaceus, the common asparagus fern, which, despite its ubiquitousness remains popular for more than a few good reasons: unfussy and super easy to grow (or, hard to kill, depending on your take); excellent figure, effortlessly chic etc.

But the real gem, for me, is A. retrofractus — the ‘Ming fern’ — a less compliant yet totally captivating species with the star quality of silver-white stems and a springtime flush of acid-green foliage.

I acquired our retrofractus at one of the first Houseplant Festivals held at the Museum, advised by the seller that the seasonal contrast between its new and old needle-like leaves is something quite spectacular, which it is. This might have been about four years ago, and since then the plant has been bumped up and up pot sizes until at last filling the largest terracotta we have to offer it.

Repotting just before Christmas, I tied the stronger of its attractive though viciously thorn-clad stems to a discrete stake, and folded in the other stems to form a kind of lifted bird’s nest structure. Under the pressure of continued rapid growth, the ‘nest’ is already falling over itself, but the effect is just lovely: a tumbledown, feathery creature with a bright skeleton of questing branches.”

15/02/2023

NEW EXHIBITION! 🌿 Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden

Open 22 March – 4 June, our next exhibition will bring together a verdant collection of paintings celebrating private garden sanctuaries and public green spaces.

Discover intimate depictions of gardens, greenhouses, parks, city squares and favoured plant specimens by Modern British artists including Charles Mahoney, Evelyn Dunbar, Eric Ravilious and Ithell Colquhoun.

This exhibition is presented in partnership with , and the works will be available for purchase in aid of our education and community programmes.

🔗 Book your visit: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/private-and-public-finding-the-modern-british-garden/

🖼️ Evelyn Dunbar (1906-1960), Conservatory at the Cedars, image courtesy of Liss Llewellyn

14/02/2023

Happy Valentine’s Day! 🥰 If you’re not sure what sweet nothings to write in your beloved’s card this year, please peruse this 1920s postcard ‘The Language of Vegetables & Fruit’ for some romantic ideas 💕🧅

13/02/2023

📣 GARDEN VISITS 2023 🌿 bookings open now!

Our Garden Visits programme takes us to some of the country's most exquisite and inspiring gardens, with insightful guided tours by owners, designers and experts.

This year’s visits include Lucy Vail Floristry's sustainable flower farm in Suffolk, a fascinating private tour of The Newt in Somerset, John Little’s magical wildlife friendly Grass Roof Company garden, and more delightful private gardens from Cheshire to Oxfordshire!

Our Garden Visits programme is organised by a committee of volunteers who donate their time and expertise to raise funds for the Museum.

See all visits and get booking: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/events/?_facet_event_categories=garden-visits

📸

1. The Lodge, Oxfordshire © Clive Nichols
2. John Little’s garden, Essex © Sarah Cuttle
3. Amanda and Lucy Vail © Mark Crick

08/02/2023

🌿 Plant of the Week: Iris reticulata ‘Blue Note’

Head Gardener Matt Collins✍️

“The flowering of little reticulata irises in our courtyard pots is, for me, the kick-off for spring. There may be frosts still to come, and even the risk of snow later this month, regardless, their striking petals and magnetising falls are an irreversible vernal signal of winter losing its grip. So it feels the appropriate choice for the first ‘Plant of the Week’ of 2023.

Trialling and testing bulb species and cultivars in containers — to complement the lush courtyard planting as it charges upwards once again — is one of my many joys gardening at the Museum. Typically, our big bulb period is mid-March through early May, as I tend to favour later-flowering options like ornithogalum, allium and species tulip. This means that our early reticulata irises flower somewhat isolated and alone (bar a few snowdrops), in 7-10 little pots dotted around the garden. But I wouldn’t be without this very beautiful February exception: the reticulatas have their energising moment, they break the winter gloom, and then disappear before the true spring rush.

We pot up our bulbs in mid or late November but no sooner; too early only risks rot and unnecessary squirrel exposure. Under the courtyard walkway a mess is made of compost, grit and bark chips as we empty old containers and mix and prepare new soils for new bulbs, and those saved and stored from the previous spring.

Planting combinations are only decided on the day: it’s an exercise in creative and practical planning that I enjoy undertaking with our Horticultural Trainee (this year, Caroline Cathcart, pictured). Varieties most likely to invite Lambeth’s squirrel population over the wall — in particular, tulips and croci — are topped with stems of holly, which seems to offer enough protection when bolstered with an inch or two’s topping of grit (we remove the holly around now, once shoots have surfaced). The irises, however, develop under the additional precaution of a crate topped with perspex… they’re worth the extra trouble!”

31/01/2023

Happy Birthday to Derek Jarman, who would have been 81 today.

Our 2020 exhibition ‘My garden’s boundaries are the horizon’ explored his love of gardening, and the garden he created at Dungeness.

Jarman acquired Prospect Cottage, a fisherman’s shack on the shingle, for £32,000, when he came across a ‘For Sale’ sign while filming on the beach with Tilda Swinton. Having been diagnosed with HIV in 1986, he resolved ‘to get as much out of life as possible’ and started creating a garden.

A garden without a boundary, Jarman’s garden stands beside a nuclear power station: the shingles, wind and salt from the sea provide an extreme version of the ‘right plant, right place’ garden philosophy. It evokes an uplifting sense that if a garden can be made here, it can be made anywhere.

Photos © Howard Sooley

25/01/2023

SOW, GROW, EAT 🌿🧑‍🌾🧑‍🍳🍅 we’re launching a new FREE programme for teenagers aged 13-17 to dip a toe in the career of a gardener, food grower or chef!

Participants will learn sowing, planting and gardening skills in our greenhouse and gardens. Then in our learning 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!

The programme runs one Saturday a month for ten months. Find out more and apply: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/sowgroweat/

Deadline for applications is Monday 13 February.

23/01/2023

📣 GARDEN MUSEUM LITERARY FESTIVAL 2023 – PARHAM HOUSE

We are delighted to announce this year’s venue is Parham House in West Sussex, one of the country’s finest Elizabethan houses set at the foot of the South Downs.

Join us 23-24 June, hosted by Lady Emma Barnard and her husband, James.

📚 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.

Book tickets: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/events/garden-museum-literary-festival-2023/

Photo by Elizabeth Zeschin

09/01/2023

Lucian Freud: Wasteground, Paddington (1970)

Would you call this a garden painting?

Wasteground, Paddington (1970) depicts a view from the window at 227 Gloucester Terrace in London which was far from bucolic. Painted when Lucian Freud 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.

Not been to see yet? The exhibition is still open till 5 March!
🎟Friends go free
🔗Book your visit: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/lucian-freud-plant-portraits/

Digital partner Patch plants

21/12/2022

🎄Merry Christmas from the Garden Museum!🎄

Today is our last day open before Christmas, we re-open Monday 9 January.

🍽 The Garden Cafe is open until after lunch on Friday 23 December, re-opening Monday 9 January

✨We look forward to seeing you all again in 2023 for another year of gardens, flowers, food, and art!

This photo is from the 1912 publication ‘One & All: Gardening Annual of Amateurs & All Garden Lovers’, showing two Christmas tree growers pulling up trees.

20/12/2022

“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.”

Sarah Price is designing a garden for the 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show inspired by artist-gardener Cedric Morris. The Nurture Landscapes Garden built by Crocus will combine textures reminiscent of the house at Benton End with a wild planting palette incorporating the Benton Iris, Elaeagnus Quicksilver and other Morris cultivars.

We spoke to Sarah to find out what we can expect from this exciting project: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/sarah-price-designing-a-cedric-morris-inspired-garden/

Image: illustration for The Nurture Landscapes Garden courtesy of Sarah Price Landscapes

08/12/2022

Lucian Freud would have been 100 today!

Born on 8 December 1922 in Berlin, we are celebrating Freud’s centenary with our current exhibition Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits, the first exhibition to delve into his lesser-known works as a prolific painter of plants.

🗓Open until 5 March 2023

🎟Friends go free!
🔗Book your visit: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/lucian-freud-plant-portraits/



Image: Flowers on a Red Chair, 1998 (oil on canvas) Freud, Lucian, Private Collection © The Lucian Freud Archive, Bridgeman Images

06/12/2022

Lucian Freud: 'Two Plants' (1977-1980)

What happens when you spend three years on a plant painting?

Lucian Freud painted ‘Two Plants’ from 1977-1980, capturing growth, movement, new life, and death. Curator Giovanni Aloi explains what this experimental painting can teach us about Freud’s original approach to plant portraits.

🌿 is open until 5 March
🎟 Friends go free!
🔗 Book your visit: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/lucian-freud-plant-portraits/

Digital partner Patch plants

02/12/2022

“She’s one of these people that can grow anything. People would give her plants that were dying, and she would resurrect them. It’s like she didn’t have a green thumb, she had like green hands… so for her it’s very much about a place to switch off from everything else.”

Sybil Phoenix OBE was born in 1927 in Guyana. She moved to London in 1958, would go on to become Civic Mayoress of Lewisham and was the first black woman in Britain to receive an MBE in 1973 for services to the community followed by an OBE in 2008.

For our project, we interviewed Sybil’s son Woodrow about how his mother uses her love for gardening and ceramics to celebrate her Guyanese roots.

🔗 Read the full story: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/sowingroots/sowing-roots-sybil-phoenix-obe/

📸 Photos of Sybil’s garden, ceramics and Woodrow Phoenix by Federico Rivas

29/11/2022

Lucian Freud: Small Fern (1967)

🪴Lucian Freud’s ‘Small Fern’ (1967): this unusual composition encapsulates Freud’s approach to painting plants. Placed on the floor and seen from above, this Boston fern sits snug in the modesty of its terracotta pot.

Curator of Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits Giovanni Aloi explains what we can learn from this seemingly simple painting.

🌿 is open until 5 March

🎟 Friends go free!

🔗 Book your visit: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/lucian-freud-plant-portraits/

Digital partner Patch plants

25/11/2022

🌻Flowers from the Frontline

In March, jewellery designer Phoebe Walsh reached out to Kyivan artist Olga Morozova, who agreed to go searching for flowers as her city fell ablaze.

She sent the flowers to Phoebe in London, who has created a series of miniature flower pressing books in recycled sterling silver. Each contains a single war flower from Kyiv.

🔗 We spoke with Phoebe to find out more about the project, which was inspired by wartime wildflower pressings from the Garden Museum collection: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/phoebe-walsh-flowers-from-the-frontline/

22/11/2022

Talk | Freud and Flowers at Chatsworth - Garden Museum

📣Talk next week! Freud and Flowers at Chatsworth 🌸

The Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth House holds a rich variety of works by Lucian Freud, including paintings, prints, objects and even a cyclamen mural in a bathroom!

Focusing on flowers and plants, Dr Alex Hodby, Senior Curator at Chatsworth will expand on how Freud’s work is understood within the context of the historic collection, and in relation to the Cavendish family.

Join us Tues 29 November at 7pm or watch the livestream online.

The Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth holds a rich variety of works by Lucian Freud, including paintings, prints, objects and even a cyclamen mural in a bathroom. This talk by Dr Alexandra Hodby, Senior Curator of Programme at Chatsworth, will explore these works in the context of the collection a...

15/11/2022

Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits

The master of the modern n**e, Lucian Freud was also a prolific painter of plants.

In the first exhibition to dig into Freud’s paintings of plants and gardens, we explore how he depicted plants throughout his life with the same gritty, unfiltered style as his human subjects.

Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits is open until 5 March.
Friends go free!
Book your vist: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/lucian-freud-plant-portraits/

07/11/2022

TOPIARY TIME 🌳 these photos are from Nathaniel Lloyd’s definitive topiary tome ‘Garden Craftsmanship in Yew and Box’

Father of Christopher Lloyd and owner of Great Dixter before him, Nathaniel was something of a topiary expert, developing the famous lawn display there. These photos are from his 1925 book on the subject, which he opens with the note:

“To my friends, amateur topiarists and professional gardeners, whose keen interest and invaluable assistance have developed these possibilities in yew and box, this little book is dedicted.”

Feeling totally topiary-inspired? Discover artist-gardener Charlotte Molesworth’s magical topiary garden in her talk with Non Morris tomorrow: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/events/charlotte-molesworth-in-conversation-with-non-morris/

04/11/2022

We are over the moon to announce that the Garden Museum has been successful in our application to become a National Portfolio Organisation!

We are hugely grateful to Arts Council England and DCMS for their funding to help us achieve our vision for the future of the museum from 2023-2026.

03/11/2022

🔬🌿 New Plant Science Lecture! Leif Bersweden: Where the Wildflowers Grow

🚴‍♂️ In 2021 Leif Bersweden went on a big botanical adventure around Britain and Ireland with his bike, travelling from Hampshire’s Bluebell woods to the shores of Shetland.

✍️ His latest book ‘Where the Wildflowers Grow’ follows him on that journey as he botanises his way through an entire calendar year, meeting our plants, telling their stories and exploring people’s connection to their local flora.

This talk, like the book, is all about the joy of engaging with nature, the importance of plants for our climate, and celebrating our unbelievable botanical diversity.

🗓 Join us Fri 25 November, 7pm. £15 Standard, £5 Students / Young Fronds (our free under 35s membership scheme)
🔗 Book tickets: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/events/plant-science-lecture-leif-bersweden-where-the-wildflowers-grow/

🌱 Plant images:
1. Hyacinthoides non-scripta (Bluebell) Preshaw Wood, Hampshire
2. Oblong-leaved Sundew

31/10/2022

“Most beautiful of all were the dahlias. As I drove up to the farm, the sight of them en masse spilling through the farmhouse fence made my heart do a little leap. The huge flowerheads jostled side by side in a painter’s palette of pinks, peaches, oranges and reds. One of the most precious plants in the autumn garden, dahlias blaze on into earliest winter and the first frosts, becoming more precious still, as the green abundance into which they first bloomed withers around them. Their beauty lingers on in the gloom as the last echo of summer.”

As part of her Horticultural Traineeship at the Garden Museum, Caroline Cathcart has the opportunity to work with experienced gardeners across the UK. Her latest placement took her to Sarah Raven’s Perch Hill garden, where she learned from Head Gardener Josie Lewis.

✍️ Read Caroline’s account of a week at idyllic Perch Hill: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/horticultural-trainee-blog-a-week-at-sarah-ravens-perch-hill-farm/

26/10/2022

Lucian Freud's Cyclamen Mural in a Chatsworth Bathroom

Did you know Lucian Freud painted a cyclamen mural in a bathroom at Chatsworth House?

We recreated the bathroom in our new exhibition Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits. So to find out more about the real thing, we visited Chatsworth where Senior Curator Dr Alexandra Hodby shared the story of this little-known masterpiece.

🗓 is open until 5 March
🎟 Friends go free!
🔗 Book your visit: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/lucian-freud-plant-portraits/

Watch the full film in our online exhibition: digital partner Patch plants

21/10/2022

Our very own Garden Museum Shop will be selling houseplant themed ephemera all weekend at the , this lovely leafy greeting card among them 🌿 the illustration from our collection dates back to 1861.

Grab your tickets: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/events/houseplant-festival-2022/

18/10/2022

📣New garden talk! Charlotte Molesworth in conversation with Non Morris

Artist and gardener Charlotte Molesworth has been making a gentle haven of a garden – an enclosed world of light-catching peacocks, plump tiers of variegated box – for forty years. The garden at Balmoral Cottage in Kent was originally the kitchen garden of Collingwood ‘Cherry’ Ingram’s Benenden Estate.

Non and Charlotte will be chatting about the delights of topiary – the way giant fennel and towering sunflowers dazzle against the formal structure, and why Buxus sempervirens ‘Elegantissima’ is the ‘Queen of box’.

🌿 This talk is part of our series on magical gardens and how to make them, hosted by writer and garden designer Non Morris.

🗓 Join us Tues 8 November, 7pm. Either join us in person or watch the livestream or recording online: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/events/charlotte-molesworth-in-conversation-with-non-morris/

Image: Charlotte Molesworth by Paul Wetherell

17/10/2022

Speaking at this weekend's , James Wong on indoor ecosystems!

Learn how understanding the Victorian colonial origins of terrariums and the biology of rainforests can make you a terrarium-design pro.

Sun 23 Oct, 3.30pm: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/events/houseplant-festival-2022/

11/10/2022

Twilight Bat Walk - Garden Museum

Join us in Archbishops Park for an evening of bat discovery!

Inspired by Lucian Freud's painting of a bat in our upcoming exhibition, we're going on a walk in our local park using bat detector tools to listen for bats. Learn about the origins, importance and lifestyles of our British bats, and what we can do to help protect and encourage them.

Tues 25 October, 7pm

Inspired by Lucian Freud’s painting of a bat in our upcoming exhibition Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits, join us for a guided bat walk around Archbishop’s Park next door to the Garden Museum.