The Garden Museum (formerly known as the Museum of Garden History) in London is Britain's only museum of the art, history and design of gardens. The museum re-opened in 2017 after an 18-month redevelopment project.
The building is largely the Victorian reconstruction of the Church of St Mary-at-Lambeth which was deconsecrated in 1972 and was scheduled to be demolished. It is adjacent to Lambeth Palace on the south bank of the River Thames in London, on Lambeth Road. In 1976, John and Rosemary Nicholson traced the tomb of the two 17th-century royal gardeners and plant hunters John Tradescant the Elder and the Younger to the churchyard, and were inspired to create the Museum of Garden History. It was the first museum in the world dedicated to the history of gardening.
The Museum's main gallery is on the first floor, in the body of the church. The collection includes tools, art, and ephemera of gardening, including a gallery about garden design and the evolution of gardening, as well as a recreation of Tradescant's 17th-century Ark. The collections give an insight into the social history of gardening as well as the practical aspects of the subject. There are three temporary exhibition spaces which look at various aspects of plants and gardens and change every six months The redevelopment of the Museum, completed in 2017, included two new garden designs. The Sackler Garden, designed by Dan Pearson sits at the centre of the courtyard, replacing the knot garden, and the Museum's front garden is designed by Christopher Bradley-Hole.
In 2006, Christopher Woodward, formerly director of the Holburne Museum in Bath, Somerset, was appointed as the director of the Garden Museum.
Development of the museum
The museum is run as an independent registered charity and does not receive government funding, instead depending on Friends, Patrons and charitable trusts, in addition to income from admission and events. In 2002, its 25th anniversary year, the museum launched a campaign to raise at least £600,000 to pay for a general overhaul of its facilities.
Phase I (2008) Following a design competition, in 2008, the museum's interior was transformed into a centre for exhibitions and events by the construction of contemporary gallery spaces; the work was designed by Dow Jones Architects. The renamed museum (now the Garden Museum) opened to the public on 18 November of that year.
Phase II (2015–2017) From 2015 to 2017, the Museum undertook a second phase of work to complete the restoration of the ancient structure and its transformation into a museum. In 2014 the museum was awarded a grant of £3,510,600 from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the development. The redeveloped museum re-opened in 2017 with more galleries and spaces for education and events inserted into the historic interior in a second, award-winning design by Dow Jones Architects.
This phase doubled the space for display of the permanent collection, 95% of which was in store, and created extra space for schools and community outreach work, in addition to a bigger café and modern visitor services. At the core of the project was an aspiration to create the country's first archive of garden and landscape design which is open to the public on appointment. The museum now includes a recreation of "Tradescant’s Ark" through the loan from the Ashmolean Museum of the objects which originally belonged in Tradescant's collection at Lambeth, later bequeathed to his neighbour, Elias Ashmole.
The redevelopment also included a viewing platform being lowered onto the medieval tower, allowing the public to access the tower and enjoy the view across the Thames to Westminster for the first time.
In 2020, Dan Pearson designed a new courtyard garden for Garden Museum; his inspiration for this garden came from a number of people who might be considered the modern-day equivalents of the Tradescants.
St Mary-at-Lambeth
The Garden Museum is housed in the medieval and Victorian church of St Mary-at-Lambeth. The first church on the site was built before the Norman Conquest, and was integral to the religious centre established by the Archbishops of Canterbury in the 12th century. The structure was deconsecrated in 1972, and rescued from demolition by the museum's founder, Rosemary Nicholson. The museum opened in 1977 as the world's first museum of garden history; the churchyard was re-designed as a garden.
The church is the oldest structure in the London Borough of Lambeth, except for the crypt of Lambeth Palace itself, and its burials and monuments are a record of 950 years of a community. But for the Palace, it has perhaps the richest historical story of any building in the borough.