If you’ve yet to visit London’s Garden Museum, here’s news of a brand new exhibition to further entice you into its wonderful space.
Housed in an abandoned ancient church, St Mary’s on the south bank of the Thames, opposite the Palace of Westminster and Tate Britain, London's Garden Museum celebrates the design, history and art of gardens. It's a little gem of a place: one of London's best small, specialist museums, we reckon.
Today, the museum’s new gallery is opening with a new temporary exhibition called Garden Open Today. The show examines our love affair with other people’s gardens; national neighbourly snooping has been around a lot longer than Through The Keyhole, it seems.
On display will be a Dutch painter Anthonis van den Wyngaerde's sketch of Henry VIII’s palace at Richmond – the earlier drawing of an English garden in existence – as well as exhibits on the genteel “Age of Taste”, Victorian pleasure gardens, Vita Sackville-West’s private photographic albums of Sissinghurst and more recently, the opening up of country estates and the National Gardens Scheme.
Garden Open Today will look at the influence of garden visiting on social class, style, fashion and recreation. And, promises the website, it’ll “celebrate the pleasure, curiosity and inspiration that lead us to a stranger’s lawn”.
Look out for the varied events that accompany the exhibition, including one run by Mr Titchmarsh.
Garden Open Today: 300 Years of Garden Visiting opens today at the Garden Museum, St Mary-at-Lambeth, Lambeth Palace Road, London, SE1 7LB and runs until 24 June. Tickets cost £7.50 for adults and £6.50 concessions, Art Fund members £3. Visit www.gardenmuseum.org.uk to find out more.
Photo by Iris Jones in the londonist flickrpool
