Wednesday 10 November 2004, 18.30-20.00
Sir Roy Strong
The Laskett: A Writer's Garden
in the Conference Centre
Sir Roy Strong and his late wife, the designer Julia Trevelyan Oman, together created over the last 30 years what is thought to be the largest formal garden planted since 1945, The Laskett. In it they have etched the story of their lives - creating a biographical garden haunted by people past and present. Sir Roy will describe The Laskett's creation from a field on the Welsh Borders in Herefordshire.
Sir Roy Strong is a well-known writer, historian, gardener and diarist and a regular contributor to TV programmes.
Sir
Roy Strong's choice: 'The Glory of the Garden' by Rudyard Kipling
Price £5.00 (concessions £3.50)
Tuesday 16 November 2004, 18.30-20.00
Jonathan Bate, Editor John
Clare - Selected Poems
in the British Library Shop
Was John Clare (1793-1864) the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced? Few have ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood and of the alienated and unstable self.
Jonathan Bate will discuss his selection, take questions and sign copies of this new book .
Jonathan Bate is widely regarded as one of the world's leading Shakespearean scholars, and author of the acclaimed biography, John Clare.
Free admission
Wednesday 24 November 2004, 18.30-20.00
Josephine Hart with Dominic West, Charlotte Rampling, Claire Bloom and Harriet Walter
An Evening of Poetry Inspired by the Garden
in the Conference
Centre
Come
into the garden! Join us for Josephine Hart's personal selection
of poems with a gardens theme. Ms Hart will preface each reading
with her own illuminating commentary.
Josephine Hart is a novelist and the guiding light of West End
Poets. Dominic West’s many film appearances include The
Forgotten, Mona Lisa Smile and Chicago.
Charlotte Rampling is a leading international film and stage actor
who first rose to success with 'The Knack'. Harriet Walter has appeared
on stage and screen for the last 20 years, a 'serious' actress,
who is equally at home with comedic and more avant-garde roles.
Claire Bloom has been one our leading film and stage actresses for
many years.
Josephine
Hart's choice: 'The Mower' by Philip Larkin
Price £7.50 (concessions £5.00)
Wednesday 19 January 2005, 18.30-20.00
Brent Elliott
A History of the Garden Magazine
in the Conference Centre
The development of gardening in the last two centuries has gone
hand in hand with the development of gardening magazines: it is
the magazines that have been responsible for publicising trends,
announcing innovations, and allowing gardeners to communicate with
each other, attack each other, and defend themselves.
The 1820s and 1830s saw the founding of the first monthly magazines
on gardening, and eventually the first weekly gardening newspapers.
Fifty years later, there were four major weekly newspapers competing
for the attention of the professional gardener, and the first magazines
for the amateur were appearing. This lecture surveys the changing
fortunes of gardening magazines from their beginnings in the world
of the late Georgian country house to the contemporary world of
the garden makeover.
Dr Brent Elliott is Librarian and Archivist at the Royal Horticultural
Society Lindley Library.
Price £6.00 (concessions £4.00)
Monday 24 January 2005, 18.30-20.00
Peter Florence, Jackie Wilson
and Michael Morpurgo
Classic Book - The Secret Garden
in the Conference Centre
Frances
Hodgson Burnett's book for children, written in 1888 is loved by
many adults. The story of the transformation of both Mary Lennox
'the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen' and the abandoned,
locked garden at Misselthwaite Manor has captivated many over the
years. But how does it stand up to contemporary analysis?
Take your opportunity to put your questions to the panel.
Peter Florence is Director, Orange Word.
Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Morpurgo are both authors of best-selling
children's books.
Peter
Florence's choice: 'The Selfish Giant' by Oscar Wilde
Price £6.00 (concessions £4.00)
Wednesday 26 January 2005, 18.15-18.45
Frances Harris
From Paradise Remade to All Nature as a Garden
in the Pearson gallery
Price £3.00.
Please note this event is not seated
Monday 31 January 2005, 18.30-20.00
Frances Harris
'Elysium Britannicum', John Evelyn's
Garden
in the Conference Centre
John
Evelyn's 17th-century garden at Sayes Court in Deptford is one of
the great lost gardens of London . Evelyn, the most influential
gardener of his day, was passionately interested in all aspects
of a garden: practical, scientific, aesthetic and spiritual. As
he laid out his garden on the ground, he reflected and wrote on
every aspect of the process, what he called 'the entire mysterie'
of gardening, from the preparation of the soil to the recreation
of Paradise on earth. Frances Harris uses words and images from
his books and manuscripts to explore Evelyn's garden and its meanings.
Frances Harris is one of the curators of The Writer in the Garden exhibition.
Price £6.00 (concessions £4.00)
Wednesday 2 February 2005, 18.30-20.00
Jane Owen
A Romp through Garden History from 1800
in the Conference Centre
Jane
Owen looks at the history of the middle-class garden. She explains
how society's increasing interest in gardening made it an affordable
pursuit for Everyman, and how it encouraged the arrival of new plants
and materials for landscaping and accessorising.
Looking at trendsetting gardens of seven key periods in garden history
- from the picturesque and rustic style of Regency gardens, through
the ostentatious bedding displays and exotic plant collections of
the Victorians, up to the 20th-century ‘outside room’
- she shows how gardeners, designers and botanists of the past have
influenced and shaped the designs of today.
Jane Owen is a journalist, historian, lecturer and designer. She
is the co-presenter of the recent TV series ‘Gardens through
Time’.
Price £6.00 (concessions £4.00)
Monday 7 February 2005, 18.30-20.00
Alan Titchmarsh
Royal Gardeners
in the Conference Centre
Intrigue, skulduggery and dirty doings - Alan Titchmarsh will
show how the history of Britain’s royal gardeners is as colourful
as the gardens they created. Taking in existing royal gardens as
well as many that now only exist in paintings, Alan will tell the
stories behind the gardens and the colourful monarchs who created
them. From Hampton Court Palace to Kew Palace and Gardens, to Osborne
House and through to the modern-day developments at the Prince
of Wales’s home at Highgrove, Alan will show how the Royals
have always been the trendsetters of their day.
Alan Titchmarsh is a well-known author, broadcaster and gardener.
Price £6.00 (concessions £4.00)
Wednesday 9 February 2005, 18.15-18.45
Peter Barber
The words visualised - plans and views of writers' gardens
in the
Pearson gallery
Price £3.00
Please note this event is not seated
Tuesday 15 February 2005, 18.30-20.00
Jenny Uglow
Gardening and Writing, a Journey through Time
in the Conference
Centre
From the gardens of medieval queens and Chaucer admiring the daisy, to the advice of Wordsworth, the firm opinions of Gertrude Jekyll, and the colourful writers of today, Jenny Uglow will show how gardeners and writers have always inspired each other. Her illustrated talk will feature rhyming advice books for Tudor farmer's wives, touching 18-century diaries, grand designs and botanical excursions, and the comical gardeners of Dickens, Diary of a Nobody and P.G. Wodehouse.
Jenny Uglow is a biographer and reviewer who has acted as historical
consultant on several BBC 'classic' serials. Her latest book is
A Little History of British Gardening.
Jenny
Uglow's choice: Alexander Pope's sketch for a garden
Price £6.00 (concessions £4.00)
Monday 21 February 2005, 18.30-20.00
Anna Pavord
Gardens of the Mind
in the Conference Centre
Gardens of the mind are so much easier to bring into bloom than the real things, which have a wretched tendency to be heaving with slugs and attacked by unnerving, unnamed varieties of fungal growth. In this talk Anna Pavord will take a tour with Wodehouse round Blandings Castle, with Jane Austen round Donwell Abbey and with George Eliot through a kitchen garden where, as she writes, 'you were in a delicious fluctuation between the scent of jasmine and the juice of gooseberries'.
Anna Pavord is a well known author and contributing gardening writer. Her works include the highly acclaimed bestseller The Tulip.
Price £6.00 (concessions £4.00)
Wednesday 23 February 2005, 18.30-20.00
Gretchen Gerzina
Frances Hodgson Burnett: A Garden of One's Own
in the Conference
Centre
Frances
Hodgson Burnett grew up in Manchester without the consolation of
a garden, but when she moved to Tennessee at the age of 15, she
found nature in abundance. As an adult, she exulted in creating
gardens of her own, first in Kent , where she spent all fair weather
days writing in her garden, and later at her house on Long Island
, New York , where she had rosebushes planted by the thousands,
and where she wrote her most famous novel The Secret Garden.
Professor Gerzina's talk will be about Burnett's gardens and their
importance to her fiction.
Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is Professor of English at Barnard College,
Columbia University .
Price £6.00 (concessions £4.00)
Wednesday 9 March 2005, 18.15-18.45
Chris Fletcher 'A green thought'
- the garden as metaphor
in the Pearson gallery
Price £3.00
Please note this event is not seated
Wednesday 16 March 2005, 18.30-20.00
Dan Pearson
Gardens - an Environmental Lifeline?
in the Conference Centre
In this illustrated talk, Dan Pearson will show how two of his
clients in Japan have used gardens to improve the environment and
the well-being of the people using the spaces.
One project uses 14 roof gardens to address the severity of a new-built urban environment. Fusing the tradition of British gardens and landscapes with a strict palette of Japanese plants, the gardens link as an elevated landscape to bring a calming influence to this new development. A ribbon that takes the form of a rill, a hedge or a dry stone wall connects all the gardens and new technology has been used to sustain these gardens in the most unlikely of places.
The second project is for an ecological park sustainable for a
thousand years. Although still at concept stage there are big ideas
to entice people from the comfort of the familiar to the ruggedness
of a forest where one has to wear bells to ward off the bears!
Price £6.00 (concessions £4.00)
Wednesday 23 March 2005, 18.15-18.45
Sally Brown
Romantic and enchanted gardens
in the Pearson gallery
Price £3.00
Please note this event is not seated
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