Our fascination with lost gardens is more than a mere pervasive wistfulness for the past or a vague longing for vanished paradise – it is often fuelled by our interest in reconstructing worlds that supply us with a powerful means of making sense of the past, and a way of reading history. London gardens, being often shut off from the continuum of everyday life around them, and so allowing particular scope for individual experimentation, readily encapsulated attitudes to the design and use of open spaces that now often seem eccentric and improbable.
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan's talk will focus on and celebrate the evanescence of the metropolis’s vast and varied garden legacy, and will provide insights into his forthcoming exhibition Lost Gardens of London which will open at the Garden Museum in October 2024. The gardens he will examine range from the capital's humble allotments and defunct squares to amateur botanical gardens, princely pleasure grounds, artists' gardens and private menageries – gardens that have either vanished or that have changed beyond recognition. Lost Gardens will seek to remind us of what a precious asset gardened greenspace is, and how it has contributed over the centuries to the quality of life and well-being of generations of inhabitants of the Metropolis.
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan is a landscape architect and historian. He is gardens adviser to Historic Royal Palaces, President of the London Gardens Trust (LGT), lecturer at New York University (London) and editor of The London Gardener (journal of the LGT). He is the author of several books including The London Square (Yale, 2012), and English Garden Eccentrics (Mellon/Yale, 2022). His Lost Gardens of London will be published by the Modern Art Press in October 2024.
Photo credit: Artist unknown, Summer Fashions for 1844, 1844, aquatint. London Metropolitan Archives
This talk, the second of our winter lectures, will be held at Ashtead Peace Memorial Hall. The talk begins promptly at 2pm followed by tea, coffee and cake.
Cost: £12 for SGT members / £15 for guests.
Booking is essential for catering purposes.