BY TIM WATERMAN
The colonial past and the horticultural present take tea at London?s Garden Museum.
FROM THE OCTOBER 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.
Just upstream and across the River Thames from the long, neo-Gothic bulk of the Palace of Westminster, which contains the houses of Parliament and the tower that contains the bell Big Ben, are two venerable buildings that have been added to since the Middle Ages. One is Lambeth Palace, the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The other is the old church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, now the home of the Garden Museum.
The Garden Museum?s main focus is British gardens and gardening, including not just the most elaborate and vaunted ones, but also a more intimate history of smaller gardens. Featured in particular are those of the middle classes, which have given Britain the sense of being a ?nation of gardeners.? For landscape architects with an interest in either stately or domestic gardens in Britain, the museum, which has been recently redeveloped and now includes a building addition, two newly redesigned gardens, a superb café, and an expanded collection, will be a delight. Rather than serving, as a botanical garden might, to narrate garden history through garden spaces, the Garden Museum?s collection gives a more personal-scale view through tools and ephemera that help relate the space of the garden to the space of the imagination and desire. The museum fits compactly into the space of a histori...