In 2012, the Garden Museum showed the exhibition 'Garden Open Today! 300 Years of Garden Visiting', exploring the history of one of Britain's favourite pastimes - visiting gardens. And now as gardens across the country are able to reopen again as lockdown measures loosen, we revisit the stories shared in the Journal published for the exhibition.
As curator Dominique Heyse-Moore writes in the Introduction:
“This journal adds the voices of some well-known figures in the garden world to the many that have told us about the love of wandering across a lawn that is not your own.
Nearly all of the contributors are known for their own gardens or garden design, but this compilation focuses on other places that have taken their breath away. While researching the exhibition and journal I came across so many wonderful
existing accounts of garden visits that I decided to combine words already published elsewhere with some new writing. The result is almost an anthology of poetry to visiting gardens; praise and affection for the National Gardens Scheme, who have collaborated on the exhibition and made such good use of our horticultural curiosity, is peppered throughout…”
