Our Museum

Once the heart of a medieval church, our striking Nave takes the visitor back in time while providing a welcoming space for all. Entry to the Nave is free, and here you will discover highlights from our garden history collections, temporary art exhibitions, and nature-inspired craft activities for kids.

We also use this space to host events such as talks, festivals, fairs and our free Branch Out workshops.

Upstairs in our collection galleries, discover curated highlights from our collection of objects which tell the story of British gardening from the 16th century through to today.

Through themed displays you’ll learn about garden design and meet some of Britain’s most famed garden designers, including Gertrude Jekyll and Humphry Repton. We’ll invite you to explore the nursery trade and discover the history of Elphick’s nursery, which was run by four generations of the Elphick family. In our tool gallery you can explore the evolution of garden tools from simple handmade equipment through to electronic devices that make gardening easier.

John Tradescant was born in around 1580, and his life is a mystery until, in 1609, he is recorded as a gardener at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, the Minister to King James I who discovered the Gunpowder Plot. He became gardener to King Charles I and his French wife, Henrietta Maria, and in the 1620s moved to Lambeth and began a garden of botanical specimens and nursery that featured more than 1000 plants.

Tradescant collected ‘curiosities’: natural and man-made, whether a weapon or a work of art. The Ark was intended to represent the nature, art, religions, and ways of life of all nations on earth. The collection was added to by his travels to Europe, Algeria and Russia and by gifts from the ship captains, botanists and patrons whom he knew, and by his son, also called John (1608–62), who was gardener to King Charles II and travelled to Virginia.

‘The Ark’ was open to anyone who could pay sixpence. Elias Ashmole (1617–92) was a lawyer, astrologer, and scholar who believed the Tradescants’ Ark was important to the advancement of knowledge. He published a catalogue on the younger Tradescant’s behalf, and persuaded him to bequeath the collection to him. After John’s death his widow Hester contested the bequest but lost the ownership of the collection in a court case. In 1683 the collection travelled up the Thames to Oxford to become the foundation of The Ashmolean Museum.

300 years later, objects once in The Ark have returned to Lambeth in a loan of exceptional generosity by the Ashmolean Museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Oxford Museum of Natural History.