Last week we looked at Gardens and History through the lens of an historic Garden Cemetery – this week we look at Garden History through the interpretive lens of how we preserve, interpret, codify and share gardens past and present in conversation with the Christopher Woodward, Director of London's Garden Museum . Garden history & garden hindsight as it were helping us to interpret and plan for the garden future.
Christopher has been the Director of the Garden Museum in London since 2007. Celebrating the art, history and design of gardens, the museum was originally founded in the late 1970s by Rosemary and John Nicholson in order to rescue the abandoned church of St. Mary’s at Lambeth. Under Christopher’s leadership, the Garden Museum underwent a modernization and renovation in both space and concept from 2015 – 2017.
Today, more than ever the hindsight and foresight that gardens and gardeners the world over offer to us is perhaps more rich and valuable humus to grow from than it ever has been.
You can follow the Garden Museum's work online at: gardenmuseum.org.uk and on Instagram at @gardenmuseum/
IF YOU LIKE THIS PROGAM,
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Everyday & Seasonal Sacred, Kristin Perers
JOIN US again next week, when we delve into this ongoing season of harvest and seed in our own gardens as well as in the garden of a planet all around us in conversation with Heather McCargo founder and Seed Program Manager of the Wild Seed Project in Maine. Listen in next week!
Cultivating Place is made possible in part by listeners like you and by generous support from the American Horticultural Society. Soon to Celebrate its 100th anniversary next year, AHS has been a trusted source of high quality gardening and horticultural information since 1922.
Today, AHS’s mission blends education, social responsibility, and environmental stewardship with the art and practice of horticulture. Members of AHS receive the award-winning flagship magazine, The American Gardener, free admission and other discounts to more than 345 public gardens with the Reciprocal Admissions Program, plus discounts on books, seeds, programs and more!
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Cultivating Place is also proud to receive support from the California Native Plant Society, on a mission to save California’s native plants and places using both head and heart. CNPS brings together science, education, conservation, and gardening to power the native plant movement. California is a biodiversity hotspot and CNPS is working to save the plants that make it so.
For more information on their programs and membership, please visit https://www.cnps.org/
Thinking out loud this week:
I am struck by this idea of Gardens as important spaces and places of conflict and tension – tension and conflict of the life and death sort on an every season if not everyday way.
We talk about and seek for a lot of beauty and solace and refuge, joy and fruition in our gardens and gardened spaces, but especially at this time of year – Autumn in the northern hemisphere – the reality of aging, disease, attack, disfigurement and the finality – or not - of death are daily realities. It’s hard to take sometimes….
And yet, and yet – yep here come the sunshine and platitudes – our gardens are the perfect playmates, tough lovers, gurus and comforters on these matters, aren’t they? I am far from the first or last to be irritated and thankful for this lifelong master class in what it is to really engage in life from this hardest and kindest of teachers – our gardens. They invite us to the most important of existential question and answer sessions.
While the growing season is waning for many of us in the Northern Hemisphere, and dormancy draws nigh, we all know the soil, the roots, and the many beneficial microorganisms who run the health of the world are alive and well.
The year-round weekly growing work of Cultivating Place would not be possible without the support of listeners just like you through the support button at the top of every page at Cultivating Place.com. In these last two months of the calendar year the front edge of the winter season, I am so appreciative of all of you listening and all of your supporting, if you support annually or monthly thank you! I could not curate and produce these conversations that grow us all without your help. If you have been thinking of becoming a monthly sustaining donor – now is exactly the right time to invest in these valuable, civil and growing conversations. All support matters.
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