Northern Ireland Heritage Gardens Trust Conference
The Role of Water in Historic Garden Design and Management
3-5 October 2024 I will be speaking on the Friday night: Bory Latour Marliac – the source of water lilies before and beyond Monet
Living light and colour across three continents - 7 November
Impressionists in their Gardens
Special Interest Day of 3 lectures hosted by The Arts Society Stratford upon Avon. 1. Introduction: Gardens of French impressionists - Argenteuil & Giverny to the South of France; 2. Garden as canvas - American Impressionists, home and away; 3. Living Canvas - Australian impressionists – capturing the native landscape.
Scottish roots, English estates and Welsh mines
Art and Architecture of the astute Butes
12 March 2025 Special Interest Day of three lectures hosted by The Arts Society Fife. 1. Introduction Scottish roots: Mount Stuart, Dumfries House and Falkland Palace; 2. Astute marriages, English estates and political power: the Royal Palace of Kew and Luton Hoo; 3. Black gold: Wales and Cardiff Castle.
Arts and Crafts houses and gardens
Beauty and Utility
28-30 March 2025 Examining material outcomes - in every sense - of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Rural and historic ideals for houses and gardens to counter Britain’s industrialisation. Key figures being William Morris, Philip Webb, William Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens. From the Red House to Rodmarton.
Art as nature or nature as art?
Capability Brown and Thomas Gainsborough
21 May 2025
Special Interest Day of three lectures: 1. The silken thread of pose and poise that weave through the life and works of Thomas Gainsborough; 2.
The genesis of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown that led to landscaping England; 3. Conclusion: Georgian culture and patronage
Good to be back in touch
What happened during 2023 and 2024
Three Cambridge International Summer Programme courses and a study weekend. Numerous lectures for The Arts Society, and, lucky for me, on 13 cruises. Two research trips one to Marrakech, Morocco and one to the Japanese island of Shikoku to see 'Monet's garden'. The photo shows the magic of Monet under Japanese skies.
My courses for Cambridge ICE start with a residential weeken
Gardens and plants in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece
During the weekend we will explore the living roots that fed, cured and inspired the Ancient World in Egypt and Greece, with a special focus on the significant role of gardens, real and imagined. The key source to our understanding is exactly that water, the long course of the Nile and the Eastern Mediterranean.
December 8 THIS WEEK online for the Oxford Gardens Trust
Sheer folly - weird and wonderful garden buildings
Entertaining with intellectual gymnastics, jaw dropping extravagance and vision. Cryptic, fantastical, allegorical, innovative, romantic and royal. Renaissance to Painshill, Bomarzo’s Sacro Bosco, grottoes & more https://ogt.org.uk/2021/06/29/8-december-lecture-sheer-folly-weird-and-wonderful-garden-buildlings
New Gardens Trust series
Garden designs around the French Riviera
A series that moves inland from the coast but never far from Mediterranean blues whether from the sky or the sea. Fertility was created in these ancient landscapes by forming terraces or restanques which can still be seen planted with vines, olives, fruit or vegetables. The gardens that surround many of the villas we
More talks for the Gardens Trust
Unforgettable Suffolk gardens to The Frog Service
November
Suffolk's Unforgettable Gardens
9 Religious roots to riotous ingenuity - Bury St Edmunds and its Abbey Gardens
23 Ickworth - a stupendous monument to folly
28 'Paradise on Porcelain' - English landscapes glimpsed on Catherine the Great's Green Frog Service
More talks for the Gardens Trusts
Sheer folly to Sussex weed
13 Sussex weed to Westminster Hall - the many and varied hearts of oak across the High Weald live in Lewes for the Sussex Gardens Trust
TO BE REPEATED IN 2023
Great Saxham 100 Years – A Story of Village Life
I will be giving a talk and interviewing Great Saxham residents past and present. At Priors Farm (in a marquee) by kind permission of Colonel and Mrs. Gordon Lennox. Starting at 2.30pm there will also be a glass of fizz, tea and cakes. To book please call: Sue Soper on 01284 850678 or Rosie Irish on 01284 811669
30 June 2022
The Edwardian Garden – golden and delicious
Special online event hosted by the Australian Garden History Society Victoria Branch. Bookings open on 1st June: tickets AUS$12 for AGHS members; AUS$ 12Friends of the RBG; AUS$ 15 Non-members. Bookings online: trybooking.com/BZGVX. Further information contact: Wendy Dwyer aghsvicbranch2@gmail.com or 0408340967
JULY 25-29 2022 Morning Session
Castles, Palaces and Houses of Queen Elizabeth II
A Platinum Jubilee focus. Whether official or private domain, Princess or Queen, we see fashions, tastes and social mores in the architecture and gardens. Windsor and Balmoral castles, Buckingham Palace, Sandringham.
JULY 25-29 2022 Afternoon Session
Designing Georgian Britain – 18th century consuming passions
Elegance and the Grand Tour 1714-1830. The development of architecture, landscapes, painting and furniture. Lord Burlington, William Kent, Robert Adam, ‘Capability’ Brown, Repton, Gainsborough, Chippendale.