LECTURE - The Gardens as Fine Art

The Gardens as Fine Art

by Timothy Walker

Dear Members and Guests,

We invite you to join us for the last lecture of the season given by Timothy Walker on ‘The Gardens as Fine Art’ in the Atrium on Tuesday 12th May 2026 at 20.00 hours.

In 1882 Gertrude Jekyll urged gardeners to ‘remember that in a garden we are painting a picture’. This talk not only looks at how to exploit colour when designing a border, but it also looks at the ways in which a border is different from a painting. It will conclude by looking at how contemporary work of Rothko and Jackson Pollack have evolved in parallel with ideas about what a border should look like.

This will be a live lecture with the lecturer physically present in the Atrium. We are hoping that members and Guests will take the opportunity to come to the Atrium.

For those unable to be present at the Atrium, this lecture will also be streamed via a Zoom to those who registered.

You are requested to sign up for the lecture beforehand, also if you are coming to join us in person at the Atrium, by clicking on the sentence at the 'How to book' section.

How to book this event:

Registration will open on +/- 26 APR 26 and close at midnight 10 MAY 26.

Please click on this sentence to register for Atrium attendance or Zoom.

THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER

Mr Timothy Walker

I read Botany at University College Oxford. After graduation, I worked as a trainee at Oxford Botanic Garden, the Savill Garden Windsor, and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. In 1995 I was awarded a Master of Horticulture by the Royal Horticultural Society of London.

From 1988 to 2014 I was director (Horti Praefectus) at the Oxford Botanic Garden. Between 1992 & 2000 the OBGHA won 4 gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show London. In 2009 the Botanic Garden was awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for providing imaginative educational programmes for adults, students, children, and the general public, thereby breathing new life into education for people of all ages and enriching their lives.

In 2010 I was elected as a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London. In the same year I presented a 3-part series of films on the history of botany on BBC4.

Since 2014 I have been a tutor in Plant Biology at Somerville College, Oxford.

GALLERY