The Garden Museum runs a series of talks, lectures and symposia throught the year.  Our programme of events is delivered in cohesion with the wider programme and covers a vast array of topics.

Here is a list of our talks and symposia for spring and summer 2012

 

London Parks & Gardens Trust Lecture

London’s Olympic Games

Monday 13th February  6.30pm doors open, event begins at 7pm

The story of the Olympic Games in Britain goes back much further than is usually appreciated. Dr Polley, author of a forthcoming book on the subject for English Heritage, will reveal the history of two previous London Games, their sites and predecessors. 

Join us for a glass of wine (included in the ticket price), interesting conversation and a browse on our bookstall before and after the lecture. 

Speaker Martin Polley

To book tickets through the LPGT please follow this link.

 

Urban Wildscapes Symposium: Past Utopias And Savage Futures - The Role Of Wildness In Urban Landscapes

Monday 5th March 10am - 5pm

Timed to coincide with the publication of Urban Wildscapes, published by Routledge and edited by Anna Jorgensen and Richard Keenan, this symposium at the Garden Museum continues to develop the themes found the book. In particular, the symposium aims to examine diverse past attempts at ordering the city, ranging from the ruined utopias in twentieth century modernist housing schemes to the projects of the Urban Pioneers in Berlin; and the contemporary landscape architectural projects that seek to encourage wildness and disorder in urban landscapes; as well as aiming to explore the range of attitudes towards urban ruins and wilderness that provide the social context for urban re-wilding.

Speakers include Anna Jorgensen, Steve Dobson, Alice Mah, Sam Vardy, Dougal Sheridan and Catherine Heatherington

Tickets £50, Museum Friends and LI Members £40, Full-time students £20

Lunch, refreshments and invitation to Urban Wildscapes book launch included

Doors open at 10am with the event beginning at 10.30am

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

London Parks & Gardens Trust Lecture

A Gothic Garden in Kentish Town

Monday 12th March  6.30pm doors open, event begins at 7pm

Dr William Stukeley (1687-1765), antiquarian and eccentric, created a number of gardens over a peripatetic life. His last was in Kentish Town, at the time a village north of London. Long vanished under suburbia, the garden was a curious attempt to infuse a small area with Gothic feeling.

Join us for a glass of wine (included in the ticket price), interesting conversation and a browse on our bookstall before and after the lecture. 

Speaker Michael Symes

To book tickets through the LPGT please follow this link.

 

The Gardens of William Morris – Jill, Duchess of Hamilton

Wednesday 21st March  6pm doors open, event begins at 6.30pm

As the greatest textile designer of the Victorian era, William Morris is usually associated with house interiors, fabrics, wallpapers, carpets, the Arts & Crafts movement and his revival of medieval crafts, but Jill Hamilton shows an overlooked side of this complex artist: his passion for gardens. In a lively mix of biography, anecdote and horticulture, Hamilton analyses the eight gardening principles of Morris.  ‘His beliefs on garden design are very relevant to 21st century city gardens and parks,’ she says.  Equally significant today are his ideas on ‘green cities’ and the need for open spaces. 

Hamilton’s talk is divided into three sections. Firstly, the influences on Morris’ life which shaped his outlook on art and gardens, especially Oxford where he became passionate about the Middle Ages, Chaucer’s descriptions of gardens, the Pre-Raphaelites and Dante Rossetti. While her second section concentrates on the gardens around Morris’ three houses, the Red House, Kelmscott Manor and Kelmscott House, the third section examines the overlap between Morris’ principles in garden design with the design in his fabric and tile patterns. She shows, how, hating dots, stripes and frills, he relied on motifs, small floral bouquets and trailing foliage, taken from what he called ‘the careful study of nature’ -- wild flowers, cottage garden plants and birds – many from his own gardens.   She also shows how the ideals of William Morris and his belief in the unity of the arts influenced the Bauhaus Movement in Germany.

Tonight's speaker is Jill, Duchess of Hamilton

The Museum will show a special early copy of Morris’s novel News From Nowhere which features in our current exhibition.

Tickets £15 / £10 Museum Friends, Friends of the De Morgan Centre amd The William Morris Society Members

Following the talk there will be a special William Morris inspired dinner.  Garden Cafe chef Sorrel Ferguson has designed a special spring menu inspired by the book William Morris at Home.  The menu is as follows:

William Morris Spring Supper

Pea, Lettuce and Mint Soup

May Morris's Cheese Balls

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Jersey Royal Potato, Herb and Caper Tart

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Apple Amber with Vanilla Cream

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All served with a glass of wine.

It's not too late to add dinner to your booking (if you haven't done so already). Dinner tickets are priced at £20 per person.

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

Brita von Schoenaich and muf architecture Discuss Majestic Trees versus the City

Thursday 22nd March  6pm doors open, event begins at 6.30pm

Two challenging and remarkable design practices present their most radical ideas for the place of trees in the modern city.  Muf architects will talk about their designs for the Barking Arboretum while Brita von Schoenaich discusses her plans for a forest in the sky (designed with Christopher Bradley-Hole).  The speakers will talk as much about what trees mean to us as a culture; what place do trees hold in our imagination; and how can we have a modern city with magnificent, mature trees instead of weedy, stick-thin lollipop trees so adored of architects (and architectural model builders).

Speakers:

Liza Fior, muf architecture/art LLP

Alison Crawshaw, muf architecture/art LLP

Brita von Schoenaich, Schoenaich Landscape Architects

Tickets £15 / £10 Museum Friends

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

Planning Works

Thursday 29th March  6pm doors open, event begins at 6.30pm

In the final week of our exhibition From Garden City to Green Cities architects, landscape architects and an historian celebrate five visionary projects which have achieved a balance between architecture and landscape, indoors and outdoors, and the green and the grey. What lessons can we learn from their creation – and, just as importantly, their on-going maintenance – at a time when the value of the planning is being questioned? Tonight’s event will feature a series of short talks on the topic of importance of planning and maintenance to the built green space.  This is our confirmed list of speakers and topics:

Christopher Woodward on Georgian Bath

Andrew Harland of LDA Design on Letchworth

James Lord, restorer of the New Town at Stevenage

Janet Jack, landscape architect of the Alexandra Road estate in Camden

Jonathan Kendall of Fletcher Priest, masterplanner of the Olympic 2012 Athletes Village

The evening will be chaired by Alastair McCapra, Chief Executive of the Landscape Institute.

Tickets £10 / £8 Museum Friends and Members of the Landscape Institute

Following the discussion we invite you to join us for dinner in our sustainable, vegetarian and locally sourced café to celebrate the great success of the exhibition. The menu for the evening will be a Slow Food 2 course meal with a glass of wine. 

Planning Works Dinner

Roasted Jerusalem Artichoke with Goat’s Cheese, Roasted Tomatoes and Agresto.

Salad of Beetroot, Walnuts, Watercress & Mascarpone

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Salted Caramel & Hazelnut Cheesecake

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Glass of House Wine

 

Dinner tickets £20

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

London Parks & Gardens Trust Lecture

Pitzhanger Manor and Walpole Park

Monday 16th April  6.30pm doors open, event begins at 7pm

The architect Sir John Soane owned not only a celebrated house in Lincoln's Inn Fields but also between 1800 and 1810 an estate in Ealing, including a large garden designed by John Haverfield. Now a public park, its restoration has been planned by Ealing Borough Council. Sarah Couch is the historic landscape consultant for the scheme, which has now received HLF funding.  

Join us for a glass of wine (included in the ticket price), interesting conversation and a browse on our bookstall before and after the lecture. 

Speaker Sarah Couch

To book tickets through the LPGT please follow this link.

 

A Celebration of Garden Visiting: An Evening with Alan Titchmarsh and Friends

Monday 30th April  6pm doors open, event begins at 6.30pm

In support of our exhibition Garden Open Today: 300 Years of Garden Visiting we have asked our Trustee and Britain’s Most Influential Gardener, Alan Titchmarsh, to chair a panel discussion.  Alan will ask three famous gardeners to talk not about their gardens but about what they have gained from visiting other people’s gardens over the years.  Why do famous gardeners open their gardens to the public? And which gardens do they go to when they want a shot of inspiration?  This will be a great night to come along and be inspired for the coming season! 

STOP PRESS - Fergus Garret, Head Gardener and Chief Executive at Great Dixter has agreed to speak.  John Brookes, MBE has also agreed to speak.  For more information on John and to see his recent film profile which forms part of our Archive Project please click here.  Our final speaker on the night will be Mary-Anne Robb of Cothay Manor. 

Following the discussion we invite you to join us for a special two-course meal and a glass of wine created by our chef, Sorrel Ferguson. 

Dinner Menu

Asparagus, Samphire & Lemon

Salad of Jersey Royals with Herbs & Crème Fraiche

Chocolate Pots with Rosemary Shortbread

Glass of English House Wine

 

Tickets £35 / £25 Museum Friends
Dinner tickets £20

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

Christopher Woodward’s A History of Garden Visiting

Tuesday 15th May  6 pm doors open, event begins at 6.30pm

British gardens and their makers fascinate and inspire us - from the gardens of the Tudor Royal Palaces captured in the sixteenth century to some of today’s best-loved gardens like Sissinghurst and Great Dixter.  Garden Museum Director, Christopher Woodward, tells the story of the earliest garden tourists in the 16thC to why we still love looking at other people’s lawns today. 

Please come early to give yourself some time to visit the exhibition before the talk begins.

Tickets £15 / £10 Museum Friends

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

Heligan and the Eden Project

Wednesday 16th May  6 pm doors open, event begins at 6.30pm

In support of our exhibition, Garden Open Today! 300 Years of Garden Visiting, we host a discussion on the nature and experience of designing a modern garden as a visitor attraction.  The two foremost recent cases, Heligan and The Eden Project, will be discussed by their collaborative designers, Tim Smit and Dominic Cole. 

How does a public garden designed to cope with thousands of visitors still provide a private experience?  Dominic will also show some of his drawings for The Eden Project which he has very kindly donated to our Garden Museum Archive. 

Tickets £15 / £10 Museum Friends

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

Chelsea Fringe at The Garden Museum: Martha Schwartz in Conversation with Tim Richardson

Tickets £15 / £10 Museum Friends

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

Launch of Joy Larkcom’s Just Vegetating

Wednesday 13th June  6pm doors open, event begins at 6.30pm

Joy Larkcom, proclaimed by the Observer 'the queen of vegetable growing', transformed the experience of growing vegetables in Britain - and indeed can be said to have played a large part in changing the whole of the British attitude to vegetables. Among many innovations she introduced ‘saladini’  and bags of mixed salad leaves, oriental greens, popularized the practice of cut-and-come-again and encouraged kitchen gardeners to ‘go creative’ with potagers.  



Tonight Joy talks about her life as a garden writer, starting with the Grand Vegetable Tour she undertook with her husband, Don, and their two young children in the 1970s, travelling around Europe by caravan. While Don did the cooking and taught the children, Joy bicycled off to find out everything she could about how people were growing vegetables and to collect seeds of rare varieties. The years that followed were crammed with experimenting, journalism, and research travels, mainly in China and the USA , all gathering material for her often ground breaking books - The Salad Garden,  Grow Your Own Vegetables, Oriental Vegetables and Creative Vegetable Gardening. And she’ll touch on the last chapter, retiring to south-west Ireland and creating a wind-swept potager there. 

 After the talk, Sorrel Ferguson, of the Garden Café will put together a special two-course dinner with wine inspired by Joy. 

Tickets £15 / £10 Museum Friends

Dinner tickets £20

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

Chiarascuro: An Evening with Luciano Giubbilei

NEW DATE ANNOUNCED

Thursday 14th June 6pm doors open, event begins at 6.30pm

The Garden Museum presents a special night where we attempt to invoke the spirit of the hills of Tuscany and the beauty of the Villa Gamberaia.  The evening will begin with aperitivo served in the garden.  Luciano will present his ideas of garden design, the inspiration of his Tuscan childhood and the various influences of contemporary fashion and art. 

If you have already booked a ticket for the previous cancelled date and cannot attend on the new date then your ticket will be refunded.

Following the talk a special Tuscan supper will be served. 

Tickets £25 / £20 Museum Friends

Dinner tickets £20

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

The Lost Gardens of Khajuraho

Thursday 21st June  6pm doors open, event begins at 6.30pm

In remote rural part of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, are a collection of ten walled gardens dating from the eighteenth century. These landscapes were sites of pleasure, productivity and sacred spaces. Like the late Mughal courtly world of which they are an expression their cultural origins are a hybrid of Hindu and Muslim traditions. The gardens fell into disrepair in the mid-nineteenth century, at the same time that political power in northern India passed from the noble families who created them, to the emerging power of the British East India Company.

A project is underway that aims to restore the Lost Gardens as living historical artefacts of a vanished culture, to promote organic agriculture, to provide local employment and spread the economic benefits of tourism in a poor rural district. This lecture will tell the story of the Lost Gardens, their more recent 'rediscovery' and the project to restore them, including plans to create a show garden at the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show based on them."

After the talk, Sorrel Ferguson, of the Garden Café will put together a special Indian inspired two-course dinner with wine.

Speaker: Rowland Byass, Landscape Architect and Garden Designer

Tickets £15 / £10 Museum Friends

Dinner tickets £20

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

Heritage Fruits and Vegetables Book Launch

Tuesday 3rd July  6pm doors open, event begins at 6.30pm

Many of our traditional fruit and vegetable varieties – the so-called heritage or heirloom varieties – are disappearing fast: a staggering number have vanished in the past century, a catastrophic loss of horticultural heritage and genetic diversity. But dedicated growers and organizations around the world are seeking to rediscover the older varieties, with their fascinating stories and significant advantages over newer cultivars. Presented by season for growers and seasonally minded cooks, this book introduces heritage fruits and vegetables in entertaining stories and rich photographic detail. No one interested in food, plant cultivation or history will fail to be captivated by this glorious tribute to the food we so often take for granted. 

Speaker Toby Musgrave will talk about his book by the same title.

Following the talk a special meal of heritage varieties will be created by Sorrel Ferguson.

Tickets £15 / £10 Museum Friends

Dinner tickets £20

Click here to book a place online.  Alternatively you can call the Museum on the number below to arrange your booking.

 

 

 

 

Since reopening with a new interior in 2008, our speakers have included: Beth Chatto, Fergus Garrett, Pam Lewis, Piet Oudolf, Fernado Caruncho, Tom Stuart-Smith, Dan Pearson, Anna Pavord, Judith Tankard and Jekka Macvicar.

We have partnerships with Birkbeck and the Landscape Institute and our events contribute to placing the Museum as a centre of learning for professional, academic and public audiences.

Previous talks in 2011 included:

Futurescapes

Tim Richardson launches his new book Futurescapes: The Most Exciting New Landscape Design from Around the World

A highly informed overview of today's leading practitioners in Landscape Design including former Garden Museum speakers Fernando Caruncho and Dan Pearson

Our Plot: Ten years of Allotmenteering

Cleve West

Cleve West is winner of best in Show at Chelsea 2011 and has six RHS gold medals to his name. He is also a true allotmenteer, heading off to get his hands dirty whenever he can. To celebrate the publication of Our Plot, his first book, Cleve will join Christopher Woodward in conversation about the ten years on his allotment and what he's learnt about growing, communities and cooking.

Changing Boundaries: Designing Uplifting Spaces

Maggie's Centres for cancer care are stirring debate around the interplay between wellbeing, the built environment and landscape design. The centres are also all but unique in the way landscape design and architecture work together to create a therapeutic environment. Flora Gathorne Hardy and Lily Jencks will discuss this and compare their respective projects for Maggie's.