Our fascination with lost gardens is more than a mere pervasive wistfulness for the past or a vague longing for vanished paradise—it is often fueled by our interest in reconstructing worlds that supply us with a powerful means of making sense of the past and a way of reading history. London gardens, often shut off from the continuum of everyday life around them, and so allowing particular scope for individual experimentation, readily encapsulated attitudes to the design and use of open spaces that now often seem eccentric and improbable.

This lecture, a companion to the 2024 exhibition of the same name at London’s Garden Museum, will focus on and celebrate the evanescence of the metropolis’s vast and varied garden legacy. Noted historian and landscape architect Todd Longstaffe-Gowan will examine gardens that range from the capital’s humble allotments and defunct squares to amateur botanical gardens, princely pleasure grounds, artists’ gardens, and private menageries. Some of these gardens have vanished or have changed beyond recognition, but all have contributed over the centuries to the quality of life and well-being of generations of Londoners.
 

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan is a noted historian and landscape architect. He serves as gardens adviser to Historic Royal Palaces, president of the London Gardens Trust, lecturer at New York University (London), and editor of The London Gardener. Todd is also the author of several books, including The London Square (2012), English Garden Eccentrics (2022), and Lost Gardens of London (2024).