Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust Winter Talks Programme
New Venue: Aylesbury Methodist Church & Centre – Buckingham Street, Aylesbury HP20 2NQ. Parking: front of the venue limited & Coopers Yard car park next door. The venue has excellent facilities including lift to first floor and wheelchair access. It is near the centre of the town with a choice of restaurants and cafes, including The Kings Head, a C15 coaching inn owned by the National Trust Inn.
Booking: Tickets from http://ticketsource.co.uk//buckinghamshire-gardens-trust or turn up on the day & pay by cash, card or cheque. Doors open 2.00 pm Members £10.00, Guests £12.50. Includes refreshments.
Use your Complementary Ticket: members who attended the November talk received a complentary guest ticket to invite a friend to accompany them to one of the three remaining Winter Programme Talks. We hope that having experienced one of the talks we can encourage more to join the Trust as members. We are offering a full years membership if people join now.
Saturday 27th January at 2.30 pm
Puzzle Pictures a talk by David Marsh
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, and to look at even well-known pictures in a new light and there are some laughs too!
Read David’s blog
Saturday 24th February at 2.30 pm
Public Parks a talk by Paul Rabbitts
This talk gives a really fascinating insight into the history of one of our greatest ever institutions – our great British public park. This talk illustrates their origins, the need for parks, the Victorian heyday, what makes a great park, with examples of lodges, lakes, bandstands, fountains and floral displays, to their great decline in the sixties and seventies. However, the subsequent revival has led to a major shift in interest in our parks and once again we are much in love with them.
Paul Rabbitts latest publication, ‘People’s Parks – The Design and Development of in Public Parks in Britain’ – will be available to purchase at this event.
Saturday 16th March at 2.20 pm
Gardeners’ Royal Benevolent Institute & Exbury Gardens a talk by Francesca Murray 
Francesca has co-written a history of Exbury Gardens with Lionel de Rothschild,The Eighth Wonder of the World: Exbury Gardens and the Rothschilds, which was published in 2022.Francesca’s talk will address her research on the Gardeners Royal Benevolent Institution and destitute gardeners of the 19th century.
This is not as depressing as it might sound but relates to Exbury and other gardens that we all enjoy and visit. Many of the Charity’s recipients worked as head gardeners and nurseryman supplying these gardens and many of the garden owners supported the Charity, and still do today.
