English Garden - Showcase for Flowers and Plants of the World

Beautiful plants and flowers adorning English gardens today often represent centuries of English passion and desire. They are the fruits of adventures and explorations carried out by people fascinated by their beauty and strangeness, and are not at all unrelated to the golden age of the British Empire, and prevailing historical currents, such as the Industrial Revolution.

The visual pleasure of English gardens is produced by the sympathetic harmony of plants assembled from different parts of the world for diverse purposes. Flowers also inspired designers, whose designs for interior furnishings and gardens continue to add delight to our everyday lives.

This exhibition highlighted the many protagonists who played major parts in the development of the English garden, and traced England’s centuries-old passion for plants. Organized with the full cooperation of The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which houses over 220,000 works of botanical art - the largest collection of its kind in the world - the exhibition also showcased outstanding examples of botanical art dating from the 17th century to the present, along with examples of decorative art and other related objects.

Exhibits :

• About 150 works

Concept and realisation of the exhibition :

• Michael and Mariko Whiteway

Catalogue texts :

• Stuart Durant
• Christopher Mills
• Hideaki Ohba

Lenders :

• The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
• Other private lenders

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Peter Henderson
The Nodding Renealmia
from Robert John Thornton's "The Temple of Flora"
1801