Search

History Hub

Exploring Garden History

Discover the people, places, styles and stories that have shaped our historic landscapes. The History Hub brings together resources from across the Gardens Trust to help you explore centuries of garden design, from visionary designers to iconic sites and enduring traditions.

Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon. Claude Lorrain, 1680.

Articles

Topics

Long before solar panels and smart irrigation, a different kind of energy was being quietly trialled in gardens across Europe: electricity.

Periods / Styles

Rooted in Enlightenment thinking and the rise of the picturesque, Georgian gardens became spaces where nature was artfully framed rather than tamed.

Periods

Monasteries, castles, the rich and the poor all had gardens in medieval times but what did they look like and what did they grow?

Styles

What springs to mind when you think about medieval gardens? Probably monks, monasteries and herbs first but you might remember seeing people sitting in a walled or hedged garden.

Periods

Victorian gardens offer a window into a world where nature, design, and innovation came together in dazzling harmony.

Periods

The Interwar Years (1918–1939) marked a pivotal shift in garden design, as landscapes responded to both personal grief and broader cultural transformation.

Topics

Take our family friendly activity sheets to your local park or garden to uncover its history and be inspired to create your own historic garden

People / Places

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown bought the Manor of Fenstanton and Hilton in 1767 which can be explored in this 2 mile walk by Cambridgeshire Gardens Trust.

People / Places

Invited in 1779 to redesign the college gardens of Cambridge University, Brown envisaged uniting them into a single park. Unfortunately his grand plan was never realised but they can still be explored today.

People / Places

Take a walk around the landscape altered and de-formalised by Capability Brown in the 18th Century.

People / Places

Brown started work at Wimpole in 1767 and was one of more than 250 of his countrywide commissions.

Places

Inspired by the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition of 1910, Lord Egerton decided to install his own Japanese Garden at Tatton Park.

Topics

We easily forget how life-changing some gardening inventions can be. One of those is undoubtedly the watering can. So who invented the watering can? And when?

Topics

What has a 16th century Italian architect got to do with 18th century English gardens? How did the Grand Tour indirectly influence garden design features?

Periods

With the end of the Wars of the Roses, England under the Tudor monarchs became a more peaceful country than it had been previously. Architecture became less defensive and more outward looking and the rich further developed their gardens.