The 19th Century Garden pt 3 - Painting the Victorian Garden

Our third set of lectures on the C19th garden takes us towards its heyday. As Britain’s empire expanded plant hunters scoured the world to bring home plants to fill the gardens and greenhouses not just of the rich but an ever-growing middle class. Gardening became a hobby, and indeed a passion for many in the working class too. As a result, gardening books and magazines flourished, and horticulture became big business. Garden design, like architecture became more and more eclectic. Labour was cheap so extravagance and display became commonplace in the private realm while public parks, often on a grand scale, were created all over the country, but especially in urban areas. Inevitably however there was a reaction against such artifice and excess, with a call for the return to more natural styles, and by the end of the century the cottage garden was vying with the lush herbaceous border to be the defining feature of the late Victorian garden.

This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions via the links below, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 6 sessions at a cost of £30 via the link here.

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

Due to a recent Apple decision to charge a 30% fee for paid online events unfortunately you may no longer be able to purchase this ticket from the Eventbrite iOS app. Please use a web browser on desktop or mobile to purchase or follow the link here.

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Week 1. 15 September: The Challenges of the Victorian Working-class Garden. First in a series of 6 online lectures, £5 each or all 6 for £30.

Week 2. 22 September: The Global Garden. Second in a series of 6 online lectures, £5 each or all 6 for £30.

Week 3. 29 September: The Wild Garden: William Robinson and Alfred Parsons. Third in a series of 6 online lectures, £5 each or all 6 for £30.

Week 4. 6 October: Boating Lakes and Backhanders: J. J. Sexby and the Politics of the Public Park. Fourth in a series of 6 online lectures, £5 each or all 6 for £30.

Week 5. 13 October: Painting the Victorian Garden. Fifth in a series of 6 online lectures, £5 each or all 6 for £30.

Week 6. 20 October: The Women who Broke the Glasshouse Ceiling. Last in a series of 6 online lectures, £5 each or all 6 for £30.

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Week 5. 13 October: Painting the Victorian Garden with David Marsh

The Victorian Age saw gardens emerge as a major artistic subject in their own right, perhaps hand in hand with the spread of interest in garden-making. A small number of artists even specialised in recording by their own choice not just the gardens of the rich on commission but much more ordinary gardens. This lecture will look at a range of painters and paintings who after decades of neglect are beginning to be recognized as significant figures in both art and garden history. We shall, in the words of Roy Strong, go 'sauntering past immemorial yew hedges to linger over a herbaceous border before ascending ancient stone steps leading through a weathered iron gate to who knows where'. But we’ll also look inside the conservatory and at the reality behind the chocolate box cottage garden.

After a career as a head teacher in Inner London, Dr David Marsh took very early retirement (the best thing he ever did) and returned to education on his own account. He was awarded a PhD in 2005 and now lectures about garden history anywhere that will listen to him. Recently appointed an honorary Senior Research Fellow by the University of Buckingham, he is a trustee of the Gardens Trust and chairs their Education Committee. He oversees their on-line programme and writes a weekly garden history blog which you can find at https://thegardenstrust.blog.

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