Garden Museum
Lambeth Palace Rd, London SE1 7LB
Tel: 020 7401 8865
Email: info@gardenmuseum.org.uk
To visit our website, click HERE
The Garden Museum 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 and is open seven days a week (closed first Monday of the month).
The building is housed in the ancient church of St Mary-at-Lambeth and 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 Tradescants (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 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 seventeenth 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.