Academic but not dry, informative and entertaining

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I am happy to tailor my subjects to suit you - an academic but not dry lecture or an entertaining talk - with or without illustrations running from 45-90 minutes. There is also plenty of scope for making a half or full day exploring many of the subjects in greater detail. My books, consultancies, research and travel all feed into the narrative. 

Any distance, fees negotiable, for details please email caroline.holmes.gmm@btinternet.com

Titles are listed in order of popularity:

A symphony in blue - the artist, the couturier and Atlas the most fabulous mountaine of 

             all Africke

Painter and plantsman: Cedric Morris, irises and beyond 

Permission to Poison – the Alnwick Garden

Memphis before Elvis – plants and gardens in Ancient Egypt

Australia’s Impressionists – The Heidelberg School, Fontainebleau and the zenith landscape

Impressionists in their gardens – living light and colour 

Messenger or missile - Angels with glad tidings, doom, gloom or perdition

Monet at Giverny

Artists’ Views of Australia – Aboriginal, Pioneer, Botanical and Impressionist

Engraved on my heart – Mary Tudor, the Cloth of the Field of Gold and Notre- Dame-de- Calais

Sheer Folly – weird and wonderful Garden buildings

Bory Latour-Marliac, the genius behind Monet’s Water Lilies

Step into the Christmas Card

The Folly and the Ivy

The Edwardian Garden - golden and delicious

Flowers of Impressionist Youth: World War One and their Remembrance

Herbs for Gourmet gardeners

Sheer Folly – garden history and its architectural extravaganzas

Around the world in three years with Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks 

           – an overview of the people, plants and places 

Gainsborough and Brown – eighteenth century landscapes from wider perspectives 

A Royal country house estate - Sandringham 

Design and diversity – the University Botanical Gardens, Cambridge

Medieval Gardens fit for use or delight

Motifs and motivators - water lilies, irises and sea shells

William Robinson, Gravetye Manor and Bory Latour-Marliac, a story of water lilies, 

               prunes and wine

How does your garden grow Mr. Shakespeare?

Historic Gardens of East Anglia

Cruise lectures include:

• Pre Raphaelite paintings in Liverpool – reading the symbols
• A taste for the exotic – global plants naturalise
• A Celebration of English homes and gardens in the West   
• Georgian landscape capabilities – Gainsborough and Brown
• Around the world in three years – James Cook and Joseph Banks
• Carl Linnaeus and horticultural exchanges across the high seas

· Ruhleben - Berlin's racecourse to WW1 internment camp

· Sunlight on snow - Monet in Norway

· Water as power and pomp - Peterhof, a Baroque masterpiece

· A cool history - Sea Island Cotton 

· Can you eat buccaneers? Unzip a banana and other Caribbean food stories

· Fatal attraction the darker side of plants

· Is Coral suffering from tooth decay?

· It's a rum solution to industrial waste

· Take your Turk's cap off to cactus

· A palette of adaptation - Mediterranean garden plants

· Oranges and lemons - the many zests of Mediterranean citrus 

· Shellshocker – Venus, goddess of love and gardens with Flora

· The Italian Garden template – the spectacular, theatrical Villa d’Este

· An overview of French garden history with special reference to the Abbaye Saint-Andre

· Fit for purpose - the Medieval Garden from Charlemagne to the Benedictines

· Lifting the Bamboo curtain – nineteenth century new shoots to contemporary waves

· Roman Gardens – architecture, illusion and plantsmanship

· Seasoned landscapes – olives, vines, fruit and herbs along the Rhone

· Aphorisms of Hippocrates unbound

· Behind the label - Greeks immortalised in plants

· Other people's odysseys - Homer to Leigh Fermor

· Atlantic soundings – other travellers’ accounts of the Canaries and Madeira 

· Vines, wines and Have some Madeira, m’dear

· A Floral Mosaic – Madeira and the Canaries

· A more propitious clime - glass in the garden

· A right royal setting - Kew

· A walk through domestic English garden history 

· A walk through grandee garden history

· A world resource for 200 years - the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

· Fit for use of delight - Medieval Gardens

· Keats and the Regency Garden

· Lancelot 'Capability' Brown - moving heaven and earth

· Order, Power and Conceit - Tudor Gardens

· The Chelsea Gardener and Philadelphia's Plant Hunter

· Carbon trading in Mozambique 

· Charles Darwin, the Beagle and other observations

· Hidden histories – the Lotus and the blue water lily

· Joseph Hooker - plant hunter and Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

· Linnaeus, his plant hunters and the 18th century botanical w.w.w.

· Marianne North – a remarkable Victorian traveller and painter

· People, Plants and Places - Darwin to Dylan

· A Floral kingdom – plants of the Cape

· Reunion - a little French history spiced with vanilla and cloves

· Seychelles - land and sea

· Sir Samuel Baker, the Bawa brothers and landscaping Sri Lanka