Left: ‘Watering Place, Juan Fernandez’ from Maria Callcott’s book ‘Journal of a Residence in Chile’ (1824).
This event has now passed
Title ‘I Narrowly Avoided Becoming a Slattern’: An exploration of female plant-collectors
Abstract From cross-dressing sailors to ‘diplomatic wives’ and footloose spinster artists, women have collected plants from across the continents. Rarely setting off as employed ‘hunters’, these women found themselves drawn into the lure of plant collecting, sometimes from boredom, others from necessity, sometimes incidentally. In this talk we will explore the lives and plant contributions of these often overlooked women ‘doing it for themselves’ across the centuries.
Our Speaker Twigs Way is a garden historian, writer and researcher. Twigs is fascinated by the past and intrigued by the role of flowers, gardens and landscape in art and culture of all kinds. Her talks and books reflect that endless curiosity with themes of symbolism and meaning, class and gender, art and literature. Her early work was on women in garden history and she has continued to follow that interest. Twigs is an accredited Arts Society lecturer and her history of the Chrysanthemum in art and culture was published by Reaktion in 2020.
Venue and time Hemingford Abbots Village Hall PE28 9AH. Doors will open at 2:00pm and the talk will start promptly at 2:15pm.
Bookings £12 for members of CGT and the Plant Heritage Society / £14 for guests. For this event, we are trialling bookings through Eventbrite, so please book by following this link.
Cambridgeshire Gardens Trust 