The Garden Museum's collection contains a variety of items related to the orchard, from items used to collect and harvest fruit, to images captured of those doing the harvest both in print and in painting.
We also have many images of botanical art featuring orchard grown fruit. Perhaps you could try to create your own?
These are apple picking baskets from our collection in the Museum. They’re quite different. One attached to a walking stick, and the other would have been worn as a bag – filled with apples it would have been very heavy!
These are images of apple pickers – the fashion is quite different to today!
Orchards and the fruits in them have been depicted in art for hundreds of years. The Tradescants were 17th century gardeners who introduced many new plants to England. More than 160 varieties of fruit were listed amongst the inventory of plants grown at the Tradescants nursery in Lambeth. The Garden Museum invited 40 of the worlds leading botanical artists to paint watercolours of fruit for exhibiting at the museum in 2017.
Apples paintings by botanical artists Chrissie Lightfoot and Lucinda Grant.
Pear painting by Mary Page Hickey.
After painting the ripened fruit, she ate one half then painted the other finding they are as delicious and juicy to eat as to observe. The following Spring she painted the delicate white flowers, the first to appear on spring blooming fruit trees.
Our final image is a watercolour painting of a Pear Tree.
Mary & Pete with Pear Tree by Anthony Gross 1948
Images compiled by Janine Nelson, Head of Learning