Garden Museum

The Archive of Garden Design opened in 2019 to preserve for posterity and provide access to the working records of the 20th – and 21st -century’s leading British garden designers, together with the writers and photographers who have interpreted their work.

The archive was set up to reflect that gardens vanish or change with their owners over time; we want to preserve for future generations the gardens that inspire us today.

The collection began with the archives of notable garden and landscape designers such as Penelope Hobhouse, Beth Chatto, John Brookes, Russell Page and Janet Jack, providing a unique record of their careers, working practices and the projects they produced as well as many unrealised garden designs. The archives of writers Joy Larkcom, Alan Titchmarsh and Paul Miles, as well as photographers like Andrew Lawson, who interpreted and documented garden designers’ work soon followed. Since then our holdings have continued to grow to include horticultural suppliers Elphick’s of Lewes and William Wood & Sons, and many more fascinating collections.

Our archive resources are available to consult in the Foyle Study Room at the Garden Museum, by appointment. Additionally, our outreach programme includes archive ‘Open Days’, temporary displays, and research sessions with schools and private groups. We are also working to make our collections available remotely through online exhibitions, digitisation and oral histories.

Please see our website for details about our collections, blog posts, digitisation projects and more: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/archive/

To contact the Archive please email: archives@gardenmuseum.org.uk

You can stay up to date with archive events by subscribing to the Garden Museum Newsletter.