Head Gardeners at Historic Sites - Introduction, Ben Dark
First talk in Gardens Trust series on Head Gardeners. Drawing on personal experience as a head gardener as well as archive material and contemporary diaries, Ben Dark examines the often tense, occasionally combative and sometimes staggeringly productive relationship between an estate’s most unusual servant and their employer.
Starting in 1823, when Joseph Paxton met the 6th Duke of Devonshire, and ending in 2023 with the return of ‘the celebrity head gardener,’ this talk will examine how professional horticulturalists and wealthy landowners have responded to changing garden fashions, social structures and ways of life. It will end by drawing on two-centuries’ worth of conflict and collaboration to make a prediction about how gardeners and their employers will be getting on (or not) fifty years from now. Time:
Time: 18:00 BST
