Gardens in Art - Resources for Artists

Gardens in Art - blog posts on Making A Mark 

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: scope and resources

This post sets out some possible themes and an agenda for the project. It also lists some resources in terms of links to websites and books.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art - a new squidoo lens

Highlights the introduction of this lens and explains its purpose and content.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: 2 bookshops and 1001 Gardens

Commentary on two bookshops in London with excellent art sections and a book containing the details of 1001 recommended gardens around the world

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: In the gardens of Impressionism

A review of the book "In the gardens of Impressionism" by Dr Clare A P Willsdon

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art - The Order Beds at Kew Gardens

This post explains my approach to sketching gardens "en plein air". The subject is part of Kew Gardens

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Pastel paintings of gardens in Spain

This is about some pastel paintings of gardens created as a result of a visit to Andalucia in Spain. It comments on the gardens and the process adopted for painting in them

Making a Mark: Palacio de Mondragon, Ronda

A visit to the Palacio de Mondragon in Ronda (Andalucia, Spain) and a drawing of its garden - and how to convert a potential disaster into a productive outcome.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: the concept and the art of the garden

The Art of the Garden was an exhibition which took place at the Tate Britain Gallery in London between June-August 2004. This post comments on the themes used by artists for portraying gardens

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Drawings and Paintings by Van Gogh

I've very much enjoyed doing the research for images, information and links about the drawings and paintings Van Gogh made of gardens - both public and private. He seems to have made gardens one of his prime and enduring motifs for experimenting with mark-making and drawing in both monochrome and colour.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Are you a Veggie?

This time of year vegetables are looking really good and I've been trying to tour round various kitchen gardens, vegetable plots and allotments trying to find good specimens to develop into drawings.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: The Painter's Garden

I have been delighting all month in reading - very slowly - "The Painter's Garden" a monumental catalogue of nearly 400 pages produced by Sabine Schulz and published by Hatje Cantz. I'd go so far as to say I've been enjoying it that much that I've been slowing down to avoid finishing it.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Arts and Crafts Gardens #1

I particularly like gardens associated with the Arts and Crafts heritage. I think it's because they are very much about the quality and integrity of the visual experience. This blog post aims to summarise some of the features of these gardens - which one would expect to maybe see featured in any artwork associated with them.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art continues - with Monet

Now just in case anybody doesn't know much about Monet and gardens, I thought I'd start with some links to biographical information about the man himself and then some to information about his garden at Giverny. Have a peek at the gardens and you'll see a number of the reasons why I'm a fan. I finish with some brief information to the books that I expect to be using for my research.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Monet and Argenteuil

Monet is forever associated with the garden at Giverny. However some of the most famous Impressionist paintings of gardens are associated with the time Monet spent at Argenteuil.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art - Monet and Vétheuil

At Vétheuil, Monet's paintings of gardens are fewer but continue to feature those he lives with. He painted four views of this view of the gardens at Vétheuil

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Monet and the flower garden at Giverny

When I visited Giverny for the first time I was immediately struck by the fact that Monet did not only create art with oils. His garden was also an artistic creation and is quite simply a living picture created out of nature. It's a sublime example of an artist selecting and creating the objects and their arrangements as part of the 'set-up' for his painting.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Monet and the Mediterranean

Before tackling the water garden at Giverny, I first want to look at the paintings of gardens which Monet did while travelling in the Mediterranean in the 1880s and which preceded the development of the water garden.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Monet - the story so far

This post summarises some of the lessons I've learned so far about Monet and includes a pastel painting which tries to exemplify some of things I've learned.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Monet and the water garden at Giverny

Of all the images associated with Monet, the water lilies and the Japanese bridge over the pool in the water garden at Giverny are perhaps the most well known. For more than 25 years, he painted them again and again. As a result there are many versions in museums and art galleries around the world.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Monet's final Nympheas

This post is about the final and probably some of the most famous of Monet's paintings - the Grand Decorations which are now housed in the Orangerie Museum in the Tuileries Garden in Paris. They had a long birth........His enthusiasm for work was generated by the notion of developing an idea he'd initially had nearly 20 years earlier. His aim was to produce paintings of the pond and the water lilies to fit a circular room so that they immerse the viewer of his paintings in the sensation of the pond. The notion was that the experience of the still water and the lilies would both soothe and delight at the same time. He saw the room as a refuge where cares would ebb away. It had worked for him and could work for others.

Exhibitions - drawings and paintings of gardens  

gardens in art and exhibitions

Tate Britain | Past Exhibitions | Art of the Garden

Art of the Garden - Tate Britain
3 June - 30 August 2004

An exhibition examining the relationship between the garden and British art over the past two hundred years.

Home and Garden: Paintings and Drawings of English Middle Class Urban Domestic Space 1914 to the present

Geffrye Museum in East London
This third instalment on the broad theme of 'Home and Garden' reveals an urban middle class and their living patterns (as captured in one exposure). Many of the families have incorporated small gardens into the living rooms, scenes of spatial definition or indeed of anarchy, broader creative influences and individualised behavioural patterns.

Gardens in Art - Art History links 

Monet's house and Garden at Giverny

Links for visitors to Monet's garden at Giverny

Charleston - an artists home and garden

Charleston was the home and country meeting place for the writers, painters and intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group.

Home and Garden: Paintings and Drawings of English Middle Class Urban Domestic Space 1914 to the present

On 20 February 2007, a remarkable exhibition opened at the Geffrye Museum in East London, accompanied by an excellently researched and produced catalogue. This venture is as rigorously defined by the curators as its title implies, but to the proverbial 'visitor from Mars' it provides a superbly informative and revealing investigation, anthropological in its scope and yet rich in contemporary art.

Making A Mark - drawing and painting gardens 

Katherine Tyrrell's blog about: - Making marks with pastels, pencils and pen and ink - Creating new drawings and paintings - Influences on developing both artwork and art careers - Interviews with artists - Information about resources for artists and art

Making a Mark: Making A Mark in 2007 - the plan...and an update

Initial thoughts about the Gardens in Art project - and a record of my visit to Munstead Wood in Surrey, the home of famous Arts and Crafts gardener Gertrude Jekyll

Making a Mark: Kew Gardens in June

I can highly recommend Kew Gardens in June. It's full of flowers associated with Georgia O'Keeffe - arum lilies, poppies and irises and masses of flowers more commonly associated with English Gardens - peonies, roses. Kew also has a great glasshouse which has wonderful orchids which are another favourite O'Keeffe flower.

Making a Mark: Society of Botanical Artists - Flowers and Gardens Exhibition 2007

The annual Flowers and Gardens exhibition by the Society of Botanical Artists at Central Hall Westminster maintained its very high standard in 2007 and reflected the Society's willingness to include a wide variety of approaches and media for the representation of botanical art including fruit, vegetables and fungi as well as flowers and gardens.

Making a Mark: Views from Rievaulx Terrace

A visit to Rievaulx Terrace in Yorkshire(looked after by the National Trust)

Making a Mark: The Rill Garden at Wollerton Old Hall Garden in Shropshire

Wollerton Old Hall Garden is a real find. For me it's the nearest equivalent to Sissinghurst that I've ever come across in the north of England - and my mother and I are veteran garden visitors. Lots of small garden rooms - each with its own very distinctive personality.
(This is the garden portrayed in the image at the top of this lens)

Making a Mark: Autumn at Sissinghurst

Sissinghurst Castle in Kent closes its house and gardens to the public at the end of October and does not reopen until March. I visited the garden late on Monday afternoon when it was very quiet and sketched the sixteenth century tower, in which Vita Sackville West had her writing room, and the grounds from the bank beyond the moat at the back of the gardens.

Making a Mark: The White Garden, Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent

A record of a visit to the White Garden at Sissinghurst in Kent

Making a Mark: Palacio de Mondragon, Ronda

A story of painting in pastel in and of a Mudejar Palace garden in Ronda, a disaster, how it was remedied and how it all came right in the end.

Making a Mark: Japanese Art - drawing the Chokushi Mon in Kew Gardens #1

We visited the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew this week and I attempted to draw the Japanese Gateway (the Chokushi-Mon) while at the same time trying to remember all the things I'd been learning as part of my Japanese Art Project. This post is about I designed my sketch and the things I now need to do to translate it into a more formal drawing.

Making a Mark: A visit to the Chelsea Physic Garden

The Chelsea Physic Garden, in between the River Thames and the Chelsea Embankment and Royal Hospital Road, is a real haven of peace as well as being a wonderful garden for artists interested in botanical art. The Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society was formed by a small groups of botanical artists in 1995, with the primary aim of recording in paintings and drawings, the plants growing in the Physic Garden.

Making a Mark: The Art of the Garden

I had a lovely, if rather exhausting, time at the Chelsea Flower Show on Wednesday afternoon and evening - and this post is a quick recap of what I saw.

Making a Mark: Travels with a sketchbook in a Kentish Garden

These are the images - if you want to read the text and the explanation for where I went yesterday afternoon you need to visit A hot summer's afternoon in a Kentish garden over on my other blog Travels with a Sketchbook in.....

Making a Mark: Travels with a sketchbook - Great Dixter, East Sussex

I hope you like this plein air sketch of The Long Border at Great Dixter. Click the link to go to my Travels with a Sketchbook blog where you can find out more about this absolutely terrific herbaceous border and also see some photos of this incredibly long border and some of the planting including the absolutely amazing Verbascum Olympicum.

Making a Mark: Gardens and Botanical Art

Do you draw inspiration from natural forms? Do you like observing everything about plants? If you do you probably like gardens and you may have become interested in botanical art.

Making a Mark: gardens

All posts which are labelled "gardens"

Making a Mark: Search results for garden

All posts containing the word "garden"

Travels with a sketchbook in......parks and gardens 

When I travel, I sketch. When I sketch on my travels I record it here. Plus information about the history and facilities of places I visit and lots of related links for those who want to know more........ and best viewed in Firefox

Travels with a Sketchbook in.......: garden

All sketchbook blog posts about 'gardens'

Travels with a Sketchbook in.......: Sketching the Japanese Landscape at Kew Gardens

This is the second of two blogs posts about a visit this week to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The other post is on my other blog - Japanese Art - drawing the Chokushi Mon in Kew Gardens #1. It about how I designed my sketch in relation to specific aspects of Japanese art and the things I now need to do to translate it into a more formal drawing. If you do sketches to provide material for more formal work you may it interesting.

This post will contain a few basic reminders about useful practices when sketching - plus a few other items of interest to those visiting Kew this Spring and Summer.

Travels with a Sketchbook in.......: Great Dixter

Great Dixter in East Sussex is a truly wonderful garden but presents problems for those wishing to draw or paint.

Travels with a Sketchbook in.......: Early morning light in Cheshire

I was staying at the home of my cousin and her husband in Cheshire earlier this week and found the clocks going back on Sunday meant I was getting up earlier than usual. So I took some time to sketch the views in very early morning light from rooms which look out from the front and rear of the house over gardens and fields. I even managed a sunrise!

Travels with a Sketchbook in.......: Wisley in Autumn - and the National Fruit Show

One of the lakes (at Wisley) had five very small trees whose leaves had already turned and they looked quite odd amongst so much greenery. They are however going to make some fabulous artwork for my series on drawings of gardens when I work out sizes and crops from the photos and the sketch I did.

Travels with a Sketchbook in.......: Summer at Sissinghurst

At the end of July I visited the gardens at Sissinghurst Castle - one of the most noted gardens for flowers in England. After all the rain we've had this summer, the Cottage Garden and the White Garden were both quite spectacular.

For those who have not visited before - a couple of warnings.
- The gardens are both intimate and 'full on' and swamp you with images.
- It can be very difficult if not impossible to find somewhere to sit when the gardens are open to the public.

The combination of scale and the number of visitors (it has to have timed entrance arrangements) and the total lack of scope for bringing in a chair and/or easel means that it is far from easy to either create a good composition or get much work done while the garden is open to the public.

However there is a solution!

Travels with a Sketchbook in.......: 16th Worldwide Sketchcrawl - the result

Sketching in Greenwich Park

Travels with a Sketchbook in.......: Henry Moore in Kew Gardens

At the end of October last year, we visited Kew Gardens on a sunny afternoon in order to get a lot of a fresh air, see the trees on the turn, walk a lot, sketch a bit and view some of the very many works by Henry Moore which are currently dotted around the Gardens until the end of March.

How to sketch plein air..... in gardens 

Pastels and Pencils - A Making A Mark Guide: Sketching Plein Air with Coloured Pencils

Sketching Plein Air with Coloured Pencils - a Making A Mark guide by Katherine Tyrrell.

This FREE GUIDE is about a sketch I started at Kew Gardens and completed at home. It covers:

- how to get used to a place and find a view to sketch
- how to use your camera as a tool and to collect reference photographs
- developing my version of a thumbnail sketch;
- how to consider and select colours;
- developing a sketch while working plein air and
- finishing - working back home / in the studio.

The guide is a pdf file which can be downloaded for free - and personal and education use only - from my website

Contemporary artists - painting gardens 

Leslie Smith Fine Art - Garden Paintings

Leslie Smith's garden paintings convey an atmosphere of intense stillness produced by layers of very fine detail, which take weeks of work to achieve. He likes to contrast the formal structure of lawns, hedges and topiary, walls and garden architecture with the informality of trees, plants, flowers and water. He achieves a rich depth of colour by using oil paints on canvas or board.

John Dyer / Alan Titchmarsh Limited Edition Prints

John Dyer / Alan Titchmarsh
Alan Titchmarsh's Last Summer at Barleywood Painted by John Dyer

"It is rare to meet someone who has the same appreciation of atmosphere, colour, texture and the magic that can be created in a garden, and in John we have found someone who understands exactly what we were trying to do."
Alan Titchmarsh MBE 2002

Pastels and Pencils - Houses & Gardens - fine art drawings by Katherine Tyrrell

Houses and Gardens by Katherine Tyrrell: a gallery of original fine art drawings of houses and gardens around the world in pastels and coloured pencils

Landscape Paintings of Garden Scenes by Jennifer Young

A virtual art gallery of original oil paintings, fine art prints, and limited edition reproductions for sale by visual artist Jennifer Young.

L. Diane Johnson Garden Painting Gallery

Plein air landscape paintings in acrylic, pastel, & oil
Garden Gallery - Everyone responds in some way to a garden, whether a lone blossom or in fullest splendor.

Paintings Photo Gallery by barbaracoleman at pbase.com

The La Guardia Community Garden is located at Bleeker Street and La Guardia Place in downtown Manhattan. This series of paintings represent the beginning of my long term commitment to express the color, variety and nuances of this plot of land. Like Monet who painted water lilies and many garden scenes, I am in love with this garden. I paint it in an abstract manner and hope that my lyricism translates into the joy that I feel.

Historic Gardens 

Museum of Garden History

The official site of the Museum of Garden History provides information on the world's first Museum of Garden History. The Museum is concerned with Garden History, historic garden tools, the history of Gardening, Garden Design, and gardeners.

Gardens in Art - contemporary gardens 

Tate Britain | Past Exhibitions | Art of the Garden

Derek Jarman's Garden, Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, Kent.

Tate Britain | Past Exhibitions | Art of the Garden

Barbara Hepworth's garden in St Ives Cornwall

The studio is a simple, two-story building beside a small garden whose high walls give it a private and meditative air despite being surrounded by a busy town. Hepworth initially used the garden only as a workspace but over the decades, with the help of friends and studio assistants, she reworked it extensively, cutting out new beds, making pathways and adding many new plants. The garden became a continually evolving exhibition where visitors could see her sculpture in bronze and stone, but also where Hepworth herself could look at, and think about, her work. Photographs of her garden, disseminated from the 1950s onwards, helped to create a firm association between Hepworth's abstract works and the natural world. The studio and garden opened to the public in 1976.

Visiting Gardens in the UK 

Sites which help you to find and/or access gardens

Garden Visit and Travel Guide

Map of historic and modern gardens open for public visits in Britain and Ireland. The GARDEN VISIT and TRAVEL GUIDE reviews places of interest to gardeners

The National Trust

The National Trust protects special places in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, for ever, for everyone. These include a lot of gardens.

Royal Horticultural Society

A Gardening website - The website of Britain's gardening charity - the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) - is the gateway to gardening. The RHS is the world's leading horticultural organisation and the UK's leading gardening charity. Our aim is to protect Britain's gardening heritage and help garden

National Gardens Scheme - Online Guide to visiting gardens

Online version of the National garden Scheme's Yellow Book - the guide to gardens which are members of the scheme.

National Gardens Scheme - purchase Yellow Book Guide

Shop online and purchase the Yellow book, the National Gardens Scheme to visting gardens.

Walled Kitchen Gardens Network.

Our vision is for a renaissance in walled kitchen gardens, bringing together the best of the old and the best of the new. At a time of crisis in farming, walled kitchen gardens can become a part of a more local and sustainable agriculture. And they can be educational, in terms of our history - the story of food, and the lives of the people who produced it - and exploring organic techniques, crops and varieties.

Essential British Gardens - UK & Ireland Gardens and Arboretums - English Scottish Gardens

A digest of the finest gardens and arboretums in Britain and Ireland, including plant nurseries with interesting garden displays.

United Kingdom Database of Historic Parks and Gardens

This online database contains outline information on places, their locations by local authority, persons associated and links to sources of further information. It has been prepared by Landscapes & Gardens at the University of York, and has been enabled by grants from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust.

Visiting gardens around the world 

The Gardens Guide: Garden finder and tour map

The Gardens Guide. Use this site to find gardens open to the public around the world. Includes maps for some parts of the world.

Daily Telegraph: The picturesque gardens at Giverny may be Claude Monet's greatest legacy

Monet's garden, like his paintings, has become so familiar to us from photographs that we assume we know it without seeing it. But how wrong we can be. I'll never forget the impact of encountering his famous water lily series for the first time at the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris.....
And recently, on a much-anticipated visit to the garden Monet made in the village of Giverny in northern France, I was blown away by the artistry and sheer exuberance of his planting. In books and articles on the garden, the water-lily ponds, wisteria-clad bridge and grand central allée strewn with nasturtiums tend to steal the show. And of course these are stunning. But I spent most of my time wandering among the network of paths and beds in the large walled garden immediately outside the house known as the Clos Normand, or traditional Normandy flower garden. I was charmed and inspired by what I found there.

Vegetable and Kitchen Gardens 

Royal Horticultural Society - Gardens : Wisley Tour - Model Vegetable Garden

Along with the Model Fruit Gardens this garden is one of Wisley's main practical demonstration features, showing old and new crops along with techniques and methods of vegetable production. Divided into smaller plots the garden provides interest throughout the growing season.

Blogs about gardening 

A selection of blogs - which make you think and have good links

Garden Rant

GardenRant: Uprooting the Gardening World

Dirt By Amy Stewart

100% organic articles, essays, and rants by garden writer Amy Stewart