Lectures and Online Events - National Garden Scheme

In Celebration of Snowdrops – Tuesday 30th January – 7pm

Catherine Swan — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 12:31:09 +0000

On Tuesday 30^th January our Chief Executive, George Plumptre, hosts a panel of garden owners who all open their gardens for snowdrops and other treasures of the late-winter. Myra Ginns who gardens at 1 Birch Drive in Bristol, Gill Hadland of Westview in Leicestershire, Griselda Kerr from The Dower House, Melbourne in Derbyshire and Karin Proudfoot from the Old Rectory Fawkham in Kent, will discuss their favourite snowdrops and how best to grow them. They will reveal how snowdrops first captured their imagination, but they will also show what other plants make their gardens so special in January and February. The discussion will be illustrated with pictures from their gardens and with a gallery of special snowdrop varieties.

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What Garden Visiting Does for Us with Robin Lane Fox – Live-stream recording

Catherine Swan — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 12:29:30 +0000

Robin has always been a garden visitor and observer and through half a century his Financial Times column has constantly drawn its inspiration and information from visits to other people’s gardens. In this year’s annual lecture he will bring that experience to life in his inimitable manner, weaving stories of his own to illustrate the joys and occasional challenges for a garden visitor at the same time as emphasising how there is no better way to gain knowledge and confidence as a gardener than looking at other people’s efforts and finding out how they have done it. He will also celebrate the uniquely British ritual of charitable garden visiting that has been nurtured by the National Garden Scheme for nearly one hundred years.

Biography

Robin Lane Fox, English classicist, historian of the Ancient World, and gardening writer has been weekly gardening columnist for the Financial Times since 1970. Of the post he has held for over fifty years Robin says: “I have no intention of stopping. Expertise grows over time and my subject keeps changing, never more so than in these times of climate change, biodiversity and virus. The garden is a priceless haven for self-isolators, and the lockdown has drawn new recruits to gardening.”

He is Garden Fellow in charge of New College, Oxford gardens, visited by 75,000 visitors a year. He also gardens in his own two-acre garden in the Cotswolds. He is an Emeritus Fellow of New College Oxford where he taught ancient history and classics from 1977 to 2017. His latest book is the best-selling Homer and his Iliad, published in July.

You can attend the lecture in person at the Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR, or watch it live-streamed online. All proceeds from ticket sales will go to the National Garden Scheme.

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Recording of ‘Gardening in the Dolfor Hills’

Catherine Swan — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 11:41:38 +0000

In 1987 Dr Wolfgang Schaefer and Kingsley George moved from Sussex, to live in Cwm Weeg, Dolfor close to Newtown in Montgomeryshire. Within a few years of taking up residence at the Cwm, major landscaping and gardening projects were undertaken and there has hardly been a period over the last 30 years without ongoing building work. These projects include various terraces, fountain, 4 ponds, Grotto, Moss Garden with Rock Face and Stumpery and in recent years levelling of a large car park accommodating buses and a spacious Garden Pavillion with visitor Cafe.

Today Cwm Weeg comprises a formal garden of just under 3 acres, surrounded by 21 acres of woodland and wild flower meadows, all open at regular intervals in the summer months.

In his talk Wolfgang will give a history of the making of this garden, leading through the changes over the last 35 years with lots of fascinating personal insights and details of the triumphs and challenges along the way.

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Recording of ‘John Brookes at Denmans:  A Modernist Comes to Sussex’

Catherine Swan — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 15:51:04 +0000

Fifty years ago, renowned landscape designer John Brookes MBE discovered Denmans through the NGS Yellow Book.   Captivated by its naturalistic plantings and innovative gravel gardens created by plantswoman, Joyce Robinson, he said the garden was something ‘new’ and that it broke with the labour-intensive garden traditions of the past. Moving to Denmans in 1980, he started the Clock House School of Garden Design and took over management of the garden.  Over the years the Modernist stylised the garden, fusing Mrs Robinson’s plantings with his bold, distinctive style.  Today the garden retains the rich horticultural heritage, gravel gardens, and dry riverbeds Mrs. Robinson created, and the flowing lines, architectural plantings, and focal points integrated by Brookes.  Denmans is a tranquil, contemporary garden at home in its Sussex setting; the best of horticulture and landscape design.  This talk tells the garden’s story, how it was nearly lost, and what the future holds.

About Gwendolyn van Paasschen

Gwendolyn van Paasschen is a garden designer and writer. Having worked with internationally renowned British landscape designer John Brookes MBE on a major multi-year project in Upstate New York, she helped write his memoir, A Landscape Legacy (Pimpernel Press, 2018), and is now chairman of the John Brookes-Denmans Foundation (JBDF) which she co-founded in 2017.  The JBDF is dedicated to perpetuating John Brookes’ design legacy and to the renovation and preservation of Denmans Garden, his garden in West Sussex.  She currently owns and runs Denmans Garden which includes a plant centre and retail space. 

She has recently edited a collection of Brookes’s unpublished essays entitled How to Design A Garden which was published in October 2021.

www.denmans.org

Instagram/Twitter: @denmans_garden

Facebook: @DenmansGarden.WSussex 

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Recording of ‘Water security and drought resistant planting’

Catherine Swan — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 15:15:19 +0000

Description

From wild landscapes and wetlands to our own back gardens, water is the basis of life on our planet. Following a summer of drought across the UK and predictions of a changeable climate, protecting your garden, and the wildlife that frequents it, from water scarcity has never been more important. In this webinar the National Garden Scheme and partnership charity the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) team up to provide practical tips and advice on adapting to drought, capturing rainwater and sustainable drainage solutions. There’ll also be expert advice on drought resistant planting from Lucy Redman, creative horticulturalist at Beth Chatto Gardens.

About Jackie Harris

Our first guest speaker is Jackie Harris from WWT. With 27 years spent in Local Government, Jackie became the Project Manager of a £6m Heritage Lottery project at WWT in 2016. This delivered eight new exhibits at Slimbridge that engage visitors in the stories of wetlands, the species that depend on them and the importance of wetlands for all life on earth. Following the completion of these projects, Jackie decided that she wasn’t quite ready to leave WWT! She now volunteers with us – helping to maintain the huge nature reserve at Slimbridge and giving talks about our work and the life of our founder – Sir Peter Scott. She also continues to work part-time delivering training to new employees, assisting with projects and events and helping out on conservation projects.

Jackie has extensive knowledge of the work that we do at WWT, and her passion for water security is shown through the innovative sustainable drainage systems she has created in her own garden. For example, Jackie has built a prototype for taking water off the conservatory roof and running it through a series of containers which act as seasonal ponds.

About Lucy Redman

Lucy has been a lecturer for the Beth Chatto Gardens since 2018 establishing the Spring and Autumn Practical Gardening Courses as well as Design Your own Garden Course. Lucy worked at the RHS Gardens, Wisely and designed/planted gardens for many years in London and East Anglia. She also assisted Xa Tollemache with the creation of 3 gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Beth Chatto visited the Lucy Redman Garden, Rushbrooke, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk in 2008 which was full of unusual plants blending with arts and crafts. She opened it regularly, privately and for the National Garden Scheme before moving to Manningtree in 2020. Lucy also assists the Education Trust with the design of community spaces and development projects creating outdoor spaces for children and adults as well as nature to thrive.

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Gardens In My Life with Arabella Lennox-Boyd – Live-stream recording

Catherine Swan — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 14:37:23 +0000

Arabella Lennox-Boyd is indisputably the international doyenne of garden designers, recently described by House & Garden magazine as ‘a world-renowned horticultural tour-de-force.’ Through a career spanning half a century she has created magical gardens all over the world with a clientele that includes royalty, aristocrats and pop stars.

In 2021 she drew the strands of her career into a sumptuous book, Gardens in my Life, giving us the title of our 2022 Annual Lecture. Illustrated with photographs as well as garden designs and sketches, Arabella’s talk will lead her audience through a wonderful array of gardens, including her own at Gresgarth Hall in Lancashire. It will also demonstrate the design skills and, in particular the plantsmanship, for which Arabella is so deservedly admired. It promises to be an inspirational evening and an opportunity to celebrate one of gardens and landscape’s most distinguished figures.

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Talk for Groups – ‘Borde Hill – Planthunter’s Paradise’

Catherine Swan — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 11:28:28 +0000

Borde Hill in Sussex is one of a small group of British gardens with a direct link to the great plant hunting expeditions of the early-20th century, where plants grown from seed collected on those expeditions can still be found and where other famous plant names have been bred and nurtured. It is also one of the National Garden Scheme’s venerable founder gardens, that opened in the charity’s first year of 1927 and are still opening.

Andrewjohn Stephenson Clarke is the great grandson of Colonel Stephenson Robert Clarke who first created the garden and the grandson of Colonel Sir Ralph Stephenson Clarke who first opened for the National Garden Scheme. He will give an introduction after which the distinguished garden writer Vanessa Berridge, whose book on Borde Hill will be published in April, will delve into the garden’s history and rich tapestry of plants, such as perhaps the most popular of all camellias, Camellia ‘Donation’ which was bred by Colonel Stephenson Robert Clarke, and give a virtual tour of the garden as it is today.

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Recording of ‘Borde Hill – Planthunter’s Paradise’

Catherine Swan — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 11:12:31 +0000

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Talks for Groups – ‘The Sheffield School approach to sustainable planting’

Catherine Swan — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 11:55:14 +0000

For some years the Sheffield School of Landscape Architecture has pioneered the promotion of sustainable design and planting. Two of its leading figures are Nigel Dunnett and James Hitchmough, both renowned for a series of internationally important projects, not least the London Olympic Park, in which a sustainable meadow style planting of perennials is showcased.

Their talk focuses on a selection of their projects, bringing to life the plants and landscapes and championing the sustainability which they believe should underpin everyone’s gardening today.

About Nigel and James

Nigel Dunnett is Professor of Planting Design and Urban Horticulture in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield, and is one of the world’s leading voices on innovative approaches to planting design.  He is a plantsman, designer and pioneer of the new ecological approach to planting gardens and public spaces.  His work revolves around the integration of ecology and horticulture to achieve low-input, high-impact landscapes that are dynamic, diverse, and tuned to nature.

James Hitchmough is Professor of Horticultural Ecology in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield. Along with his colleague Nigel Dunnett he has developed the ‘Sheffield School’ of planting design, typified by workable, sustainable solutions for public space, with high public appeal, and rich in biodiversity.

Both Nigel and James have authored a number of books and lecture regularly to audiences around the world.

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Recording of ‘The Sheffield School approach to sustainable planting’

Catherine Swan — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 11:51:48 +0000