National Gardening Week: celebrating horticultural heritage and the healing nature of green spaces with National Lottery funding

GARDEN MUSEUM LONDON

1. What inspired the Garden Museum London’s creation and how has it evolved to meet the changing needs of the community it supports?

We became the Garden Museum in 2009, after the first phase of our development. Up until then we were called the Museum of Garden History, but our renaming recognised that we were not just about the history of gardens but also about contemporary themes in gardening.

We were founded in the deconsecrated Church of St Mary-at -Lambeth, on the site of the tombs of the Tradescants, 17th century father and son gardeners and Captain William Bligh who are all connected by stories about plants.

From 2015-17 there was a full redevelopment of the museum and in 2017 we re-opened our doors to the public with new spaces including our Clore Learning Space, a Learning Studio for food learning, the Garden Cafe, our Archive Study Room and new galleries to house our permanent collection.

In 2022, we became an Arts Council funded NPO and we are now able to welcome the public into the central space of the museum for free. We have been able to appoint a Family Learning Officer who has welcomed over 2,000 parents and children over the last year to the museum for activities.

We continue to evolve with new projects including a community garden in a local park. The Healing Garden, which is maintained by our Gardening team, is a place where we can take school groups, families and community groups to study plants first hand, harvest food and be creative.

2. Your exhibitions explore and celebrate the art, history and design of British gardens and their place in our lives today. Can you share a recent initiative that has had a significant impact?

Our Caribbean Horticultural Heritage project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, traced the stories of gardeners of the Windrush generation and their descendants living and gardening in south-east London. It was the very first project to research the horticultural experiences of the Windrush generation through oral histories.

Participants were interviewed by young people about the role of gardening in their lives now and their memories of gardens and gardening. These oral history recordings are part of our archive and are available to researchers, students and members of the public.

Participants were photographed in their garden spaces, and these were exhibited alongside objects and quotes from the oral histories in our exhibition ‘Sowing Roots’ in 2021/2.

The exhibition has had a lasting impact in a variety of ways, from an artist creating a piece of sound art using the recordings, to our Sowing Roots Journal, a publication featuring stories and essays; from a display of seeds of St Lucia to the installation in the permanent gallery of the film about Mr Pink, a gardener and resident of Lewisham.

Our current ‘Black Gardening in Britain’ display also draws on it, re-displaying some of the original Sowing Roots photographs alongside Harold Gilman’s 1905 painting of a Black gardener and a painting on loan of John Ystumllyn from 1754.

Ystumllyn was a gardener of African origin who lived in North Wales in the 18th century. The display has been put together by Edward Adonteng who was one of the young people involved in the Caribbean Horticultural Heritage project from the beginning. He has organised a series of events at the museum following on from themes in the exhibition.

3. How has National Lottery funding supported the Garden Museum’s mission, and can you share an example of the difference it has made?

Our mission is to tell the stories of people, plants and gardens, inspiring change and debate, and supporting creativity and wellbeing for all.

The National Lottery has supported the Garden Museum’s mission over the years especially in learning. This has meant that we have been able to reach a wide range of groups including older people, school pupils and families through museum visits, activities and outreach. One example of this was a project in 2014 for the Centenary of WWI with our Gardening in Wartime People, Plants and the Great War learning programme.

We worked with Age UK Bromley & Greenwich on an outreach project with textiles artist Cas Holmes and ceramicist Rosa Nguyen. Based in Bromley, over a period of several weeks, the group created handkerchiefs and ceramic poppies, which we exhibited at the museum. Participants very much enjoyed engaging in the project and were empowered by visiting the museum to see their work on display.

This experience led us to, in 2017, pilot clay sessions with older people with dementia and their carers at the museum, in partnership with Arts for Dementia. This led on to become Clay for Dementia and the programme has been running ever since. Sessions are taught by artist Katie Spragg who is inspired by plants, nature and gardens in her own work and uses these as a theme in sessions. Katie’s ambition is for Clay for Dementia programmes to be set up in other locations around the country.

4. What does National Gardening Week mean to The Garden Museum and how are you marking the occasion?

National Gardening Week is an opportunity for us to celebrate what we love about gardens and gardening, to encourage people to get involved and try their hand at planting, or to just get outside and enjoy visiting a garden and taking a moment in nature.

In the Learning department we will be busy running our summer programme of cooking, plant science, art and craft sessions for families, schools and community groups and we shall be using the Healing Garden.

For all of us here at the Garden Museum, gardens and gardening are on our mind every week of the year!

Janine Nelson, Head of Learning