Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust invites its members and guests to a special Christmas Social Event in the Bennett Room of The New Inn  Stowe Landscape Gardens on Saturday 3rd December at 12 noon Arrive early and go for a walk in the beautiful grounds of Stowe, shop in  the National Trust shop and then join other members of the Trust for a buffet lunch provided by The Farm Deli, Winslow including a glass of wine/soft drink. (please let Rosemary Jury if…

CHURCH GARDENS,  A HIDDEN GEM An on line talk by Kay McHugh Kay McHugh will give an illustrated talk via zoom about her family's 25-year journey to restore and rebuild their 17th Century house and 3-acre walled garden. The talk will include a brief reference to the historical research about the property, the hard initial stages of rebuilding a home for a young family, creating a productive garden to feed that family, and finally, attempting to restore the garden to…

On Line: Broadwater Park. Speaker: Karen Fitzsimon CMLI MA AFHEA Karen is a chartered landscape architect - landscape historian and horticulturist and writer. With over 30 years of experience in the design, development & management of public & private outdoor spaces in urban and rural settings. With degrees in horticulture, landscape architecture and garden history her practice fuses the three disciplines. She has incorporated these into her academic research at the University of Westminster, where she is currently conducting doctoral…

Arts & Crafts Architecture in Amersham ON line zoom talk by Alison Bailey Discover one of the most important architects in Amersham’s 20th-century development, J H Kennard, and find out about the area’s Arts & Crafts architecture, including homes, gardens shops, and community buildings. Alison Bailey is a trustee and volunteer researcher at Amersham Museum and has been researching and writing about local history in the area for over 10 years. She published Women at War – our local suffrage…

On line zoom: The Sculptures at Stowe. Speaker:Gillian Mason Gillian Mason has been a National Trust Cultural Heritage Curator for the National Trust since 2016 and has been very involved in the restoration and replacement of the sculptures at Stowe. She will be speaking about the sculptures at Stowe and the " Restoring Stowe -The Landscape Programme" Link-in: Regional Curator for Stowe, Claydon House, Aylesbury Vale properties & the Ashridge Estate. As part of the National Trust Consultancy, and as…

Sir John Betjeman commented in his 1973 documentary Metro-Land: “All Buckinghamshire was scandalised by the appearance, high above Amersham, of a concrete house in the shape of a letter ‘Y’. It was built for a young professor by a young architect . . . ‘I am the home of the 20th century family’, it proclaimed, ‘that loves air and sun and open country’. It started a style called ‘moderne’.” Modernist Architecture in Amersham  - a talk by Alison Bailey Alison…

Puzzle Pictures This talk looks at a series of paintings from the 16th to 18th centuries which feature gardens, and helps the audience see beyond the obvious.  Are the pictures useful evidence for the history gardens? Are they “accurate” depictions?  What else might they be telling us? It might sound a bit heavy but it’s intended to intrigue the audience and make them think why the painting was made, and understand a bit more of the mind-set of the period,…

A Concise History of our Great British Parks This talk gives a really fascinating insight into the history of one of our greatest ever institutions - our great British public park. We have all enjoyed them at some time in our lives but what do we really know about them? their origins? did they really start in the Victorian period or do they go even further back? This talk illustrates their origins, talks about the need for parks, the Victorian…

Francesca Murray is a gardener and garden history enthusiast. She is currently studying for a PhD at Queen Mary University of London on Nineteenth-century gardeners, nurserymen, and the associations that came to their aid. She has a Masters in Garden History from the University of Buckingham and is a contributor of garden history articles and guest speaker for Perennial, the modern day Gardener’s Royal Benevolent institution, and a trustee of the Gardens Trust. She has co-written a history of Exbury Gardens with Lionel de…