After such a long, hard winter, it's wonderful to see tiny shoots on branches which seemed to be dead, and the first bumblebee hovering over emerging blossom. In this blog, I hope to look at green and garden-related events and initiatives - both in the UK and abroad - with occasional snippets from fellow plant enthusiasts.
So first, here's news of an exhibition which proves the gardening boom didn't start with Ground Force. The Geffrye Museum in East London is staging "A Garden Within Doors", looking at the appeal and history of houseplants over the past 400 years. The museum's period rooms are decorated with flower arrangements in keeping with that time, while the main show area, downstairs, concentrates on the huge growth of interest in domestic gardening during the 19th century. There you'll find the gardening manuals a green-fingered Victorian housewife might have consulted, displays about trend-setting inventors, writers and publishers and details of the plantsmen, nurseries, and florists to whom she would have gone for seeds, plants and equipment. And of course there are flowers - scores of them - ranging from a typical conservatory display (above) to an eighteenth century ‘auricula theatre’ and a 'pelargonium pyramid' based on a drawing in The Amateur’s Flower Garden (1878). Inspirational.
'A Garden Within Doors' is free at the Geffrye Museum, 136 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA Ph 020 7739 9893, from now until Sunday 25 July. It will be open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and on Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays from 12 noon until 5pm.
So first, here's news of an exhibition which proves the gardening boom didn't start with Ground Force. The Geffrye Museum in East London is staging "A Garden Within Doors", looking at the appeal and history of houseplants over the past 400 years. The museum's period rooms are decorated with flower arrangements in keeping with that time, while the main show area, downstairs, concentrates on the huge growth of interest in domestic gardening during the 19th century. There you'll find the gardening manuals a green-fingered Victorian housewife might have consulted, displays about trend-setting inventors, writers and publishers and details of the plantsmen, nurseries, and florists to whom she would have gone for seeds, plants and equipment. And of course there are flowers - scores of them - ranging from a typical conservatory display (above) to an eighteenth century ‘auricula theatre’ and a 'pelargonium pyramid' based on a drawing in The Amateur’s Flower Garden (1878). Inspirational.
'A Garden Within Doors' is free at the Geffrye Museum, 136 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA Ph 020 7739 9893, from now until Sunday 25 July. It will be open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and on Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays from 12 noon until 5pm.
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