Cultivating Creations: Medieval, Early Tudor, Elizabethan and Early Georgian

This exciting series of three sessions will explore the interplay between fashions in garden design and planting, textiles, fashion and culture more broadly. Focusing on the English experience but including the influence of trade and contacts more widely, we will use both images and texts to explore this cultural interplay between inside and out, chronologically in monthly sessions, commencing with the Medieval and Early Tudor and running through Elizabethan and Early Georgian.

Session 1: Gardens and fashion of the Medieval into Early Tudor, Friday 19^th September

From functional linens and hemps through to luxurious weaves and embroideries, against a background of functional plots, herb gardens and royal palaces, we will explore the overlap between textiles, embroidery, illustration, and gardens from medieval manors to Early Tudor court.

Session 2: Gardens and fashion of the Elizabethan, Friday 17th October 2025

Embroidered clothing and tapestries cover the court in symbolic images of plants and gardens whilst simpler decorative motifs adorn people and places of humbler standing. The earliest sampler (1598) includes floral motifs and books of plants inspire art and crafts. But how do we explain the divergence between traditional decoration and imports of exotic plants?

Session 3: Gardens and fashion of the Early Georgian, Friday 14th November 2025

As the eighteenth-century dawned, gardens and art shifted focus in scale and pattern. Classical motifs match architectural detail and landscape design, whilst rococo decoration invades from grottos to mantuas. William Kent and William Chambers design both furnishings and landscape, which are then envisioned on clothing and paintings – but where are the flowers?

Dr Twigs Way is a garden historian, writer and researcher. She 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, and her desire to follow unknown paths towards the unexpected. From gnomes in Neasden to hollyhocks from the Holy Land, every plant has a tale to tell, every garden a past. Twigs is the Director of MA/PhD in Garden History at the University of Buckingham, as well as a consultant and lecturer in Historic Designed Gardens and Landscapes.