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Help us restore the walled garden at Benton End

We need your help to restore Cedric Morris’s walled garden at Benton End! Please support our appeal to raise the £125,000 needed to bring the walled garden at Benton End back to life, and open to visitors in 2026.

Lambeth Green is our project to transform 5.3 acres of public realm adjacent to the Garden Museum into a series of new parks and interconnected public green spaces, including a landmark new public garden. The project has received the support of Lambeth Council, TfL, and the Mayor of London, who wrote in support of the mould-breaking approach to create London’s ‘first green traffic junction’.

The new landscape, designed by Dan Pearson Studio, will give local people and volunteers places to garden, and provide essential opportunities to learn about caring for urban green spaces. At the heart of the landscape, a new single-story horticultural pavilion, designed by Mary Duggan Architects, will provide a hub for these programmes.

This painting is the earliest portrait of a Black gardener in British history.

One of the earliest recorded Black gardeners in Britain, John Ystumllyn was abducted from West Africa at just eight years old. He was brought to North Wales, where he worked on the Ystumllyn estate in Criccieth, and was renowned for his skills in gardening and horticulture. This portrait depicting John aged sixteen has been on loan to the Garden Museum since 2023, and we now have the opportunity to acquire it permanently for our collection, saving this rare record of Black British gardening history for the nation.

As the country’s only museum of garden history, here at the Garden Museum John Ystumllyn will sit alongside other stories of great gardeners through the centuries, and will become a key part of our display on Black gardening history.

We are mounting an emergency campaign to raise £420,000 to rescue John’s portrait for the nation. We have been invited to apply for grant funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Art Fund, and ACE/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, but we need your help to get us over the finish line.

Every gift will get us closer to saving the earliest portrait of a Black gardener for the nation.