A History of Gardens 6 - Spirit of Place at Great Dixter

This online course from the Gardens Trust will be suitable for anyone curious about gardens and their stories – whether absolute beginners or those with some garden history knowledge. Running from April 2024 to April 2025, the course aims to help participants recognise important eras, themes and styles in mainly British garden history from the earliest times to today, grasp something of the social, economic, political and international contexts in which gardens have been created and find greater pleasure in visiting historic gardens. You can sign up for whole series or dip into individual talks. There will be opportunities to discuss issues with speakers after each talk, and short reading lists for further exploration.

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A HISTORY OF GARDENS 6: The Recent Past

Our final series of A History of Gardens will consider developments of the recent past. Starting with the arrival of the sleek, functional style of Modernism after the first world war, the talks will move on to explore contemporary thinking on the challenges of conserving and restoring historic parks and gardens, the rise of ecological perennial planting, the reappearance of allusive gardens and how a garden’s ‘spirit of place’ can guide sustainable plans for the future.

Themes and exemplars in garden-making are more difficult to identify without the benefit of distance and time. But considering recent ideas and approaches is bound to bring a thought-provoking end to our History of Gardens.

This ticket is for this individual talk and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions via the links below, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire fifth series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25)

Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards.

Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link, please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks .

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Talk 1. 29 April: Modernism with Katie Campbell. First in a series of 5 online lectures, £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25)

Talk 2. 6 May: Conservation and ‘Restoration’, a Personal View with John Watkins. Second in a series of 5 online lectures, £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25) *****NB this talk will be at the later time of 12 noon*****

Talk 3. 13 May: Ecological Planting Design, a History with Noel Kingsbury. Third in a series of 5 online lectures, £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25)

Talk 4. 20 May: Spirit of Place at Great Dixter with Fergus Garrett. Fourth in a series of 5 online lectures, £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25)

Talk 5. 27 May: Avant Gardening in the Twilight of a Millennium with Patrick Eyres. Last in a series of 5 online lectures, £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25)

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Talk 4. 20 May. Spirit of Place at Great Dixter with Fergus Garrett

Great Dixter is a vibrant, pioneering and immersive Grade 1 garden, originally home to the great gardener and garden writer Christopher Lloyd, with a 15th century house restored by Sir Edwin Lutyens. It is in the vanguard of ornamental planting, gardening for biodiversity and horticultural education. In this talk, head gardener Fergus Garrett will discuss how understanding the spirit of Dixter - exploring the site’s history, sense of place and famed creativity – is helping him and his team map a sustainable way forward for this historic garden in the face of the climate emergency and loss of biodiversity.

Fergus Garrett has held the position of Head Gardener for the internationally acclaimed Great Dixter Garden in Northiam, East Sussex, UK since 1993. After Christopher Lloyd’s death in 2006, Fergus took over the position of CEO of The Great Dixter Charitable Trust.

Image: Great Dixter, photo ©Dominique MacNeill from geograph.org.uk under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license

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