SGT Winter Lectures 2025

Caroline will explore the canvas of eclectic 18th-century profitable, artistic and moral settings from rural Suffolk across England.  Her subjects are Brown – an ‘earthmover’ who transformed estates into profitable sinuous landscapes – and Gainsborough – an originator of the English landscape painting school. Two talented country boys who enjoyed the patronage of many great houses as well as sampling the delights of the ‘busiest, idlest place in the world’ – Bath. She will explore science and the arts, both at the time the prerequisite of polite conversation.

Caroline is a well-known, experienced and entertaining speaker and author of many garden-related books, a course director for University of Cambridge ICE, and an accredited lecturer for the Arts Society. Caroline lives in Suffolk but gives lectures throughout the world and we are fortunate that she has agreed to kick off our 2025/6 series of Winter talks.

Following our summer visit to this exotic jungle-like garden, its owner, Andrew Brogan will talk about its development from a nettle-strewn site to the two-acre fully-landscaped exotic garden full of dramatic architectural plants, and the travels that inspired it.

With panoramic views of the Orwell Estuary and the wooded shores beyond, Woolverstone Hall was built in 1776 for William Berners of London to a design by John Johnson. The estate was already emparked and the former manor had passed through prestigious local owners including Knox Ward, Clarenceux King of Arms, who probably planted some of the great oaks still standing. Over the years the Berners family bought up land and property on the Shotley Peninsula, including the ornate gardens at Holbrook Ponds which were used for recreation. In the mid-19th century, John Berners built an estate village and made improvements to the garden and estate with the help of William Andrews Nesfield and his son W. Eden Nesfield. The Nesfields used adjoining land at Freston to create a new carriage drive through parkland, entered past a new lodge and used Freston Tower and the church as eye catchers. The Woolverstone estate was enhanced with walled and terraced gardens, an obelisk, ice house, stables, glasshouses, ferneries and a deer park. Simon will lead us through the history of this fascinating estate.

Freston Park has just been added to the National Register of Gardens by Historic England as a result of research by the SGT research group and the SUGS project. Research on Woolverstone Park has also been submitted.

Simon is a local historian who has extensively researched and shared the history of the Berners family, particularly their connection to Woolverstone Hall. He is known for his book on the life of Mary Alice Berners and has written about the Berners family’s legacy in Woolverstone. 

The garden at Prospect Cottage on Dungeness Point was created in the late 1980s by the maverick, controversial, supremely-talented theatre director and gay-rights activist, Derek Jarman. The garden, built on a flat, bleak, desolate expanse of shingle in the shadow of the Dungeness nuclear power station almost defies our definition of a garden: it has no borders and no boundaries. Yet Jarman created a wonderfully artistic landscape from stones, shells and driftwood scavenged from the beach, along with old tools, discarded rusty objects and an improbable array of indigenous and introduced plants. The result was a garden of ethereal beauty, and it still remains, 30 years after Jarman’s death, for us to explore, and to marvel at.

Jill is an early modern historian, specialising in gardens and gardening in the late-16th and early-17th centuries, although she makes occasional forays into later gardens when they spark her interest – as here! She has taught history at the Universities of Birmingham and Worcester and has devised and taught courses in garden history at Winterbourne House (a part of the University of Birmingham). She is an occasional lecturer to a variety of garden history groups and associations and is now particularly involved with the Gardens’ Trust’s online programme, both as a speaker and as a volunteer. She also works at the Shakespeare Institute Library in Stratford-upon-Avon. Her book, Gardens and Gardening in Early Modern England and Wales, was published by Yale University Press in 2018. 

Columbine Hall is a moated Manor House that was bought by Hew Stevenson and his late wife, Leslie Geddes-Brown, in 1993. They restored the house, gardens and grounds, which have featured in many books (including Secret Gardens of East Anglia by Barbara Segall) and magazines including Country Living, Country Life, Gardens Illustrated, The English Garden and The Kitchen Garden. George Carter designed the one-acre garden ‘platform’ within and enhanced by the moat.

Kate is Head Gardener at Columbine Hall, having come there at 16, straight from school, and has been in charge of the gardens for 28 years. She was a finalist in 2009’s Professional Gardener of the Year and is a member of the Professional Gardeners’ Guild. In this personal account she will be talking about her love of gardening and the part she has played in the development of Columbine Hall’s gardens.