It was proving difficult to track down the Garden Museum, until I asked a passer-by who opened up their sat nav and pointed me on my way, writes Carol Miers.
I was meeting Jess Turtle the museum manager and fascinatingly, the burgeoning museum is inside its own de-consecrated church.
We sat down in an aisle near to a modern, wooden stairwell and panelling and I learnt that the church has had many reincarnations as there has been one standing here for roughly 1,000 years.
Today, it is a nest of ideas, the latest exhibition From Garden City to Green City takes a glance at urban green spaces over just 150 years, a short time for this church that holds the remains of the famous 17th Century gardener John Tradescant.
"In the early 70s the church was due to be demolished and there was a woman called Rosemary Nicholson who discovered this," Jess said.
"Rosemary was aware that it was a really important site and there were two very historic tombs in the ground amongst the rest of the history that it was steeped in, so she campaigned to save the site."
Being close to Lambeth Palace, the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the church held monuments and graves of the senior clergy and archbishops. Yet only the 17th century remains of John Tradescant, a former head gardener to the Earl of Salisbury, saved it from becoming a car park.
In 1976 John and Rosemary Nicholson raised funds and campaigned until they stopped the demolition plans.
"Rosemary Nicholson was successful so she founded the first museum of garden history on the site and that is how we come to be in a de-consecrated church space. So garden history remains a really important part of our programme," Jess said.
Building the museum on this site is important as John Tradescant and his son had a botanical garden in Lambeth and opened the first English museum, the Ark, and even have the genus Tradescantia named after them.
Back to the exhibitions. The shows for gardeners are very personal using letters, diaries and notes that influenced them in their garden creations.
"I think that with figures such as Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd the public have an intense curiosity about who they are," Jess said.
"We take almost a sociological approach to garden design exhibitions so there is a social history element and I think people really like that and I think we do that in our exhibitions. I don't think that is actually done anywhere else."
Jess can also tap the mood of social currents as she initially studied arts management, and was part of the £36m renewal project at London's St Martin in the Fields.
Jess is responsible for 'all of the staff, operations, the fund schemes, assisting with the fund raising and the patrons' administration' as well as a host of other areas, including revenue and new trainees.
It is clear she can grasp the new wave of popularity in growing your own. Jess and the team sincerely hope that community groups will bring their projects into the exhibition space contributing to a cross-section of ideas for future urban spaces.
"We have got comments cards here and we have left space for those to add in their work," Jess said.
The exhibition is interactive or rather it is an 'inter-venture', an undertaking between different groups of people.
"We have deliberately left space on this inter-venture so that new projects can be submitted and so that local people can come in and give us their idea of a green city.
"The thing that has really excited me about being involved in this project and this programme is the sheer amount of community activity. So this isn't just about the professional opinions and a professional desire to green the urban landscape, it is about people reclaiming what has traditionally not been theirs for a very long time.
"With the guerilla gardening movement people are planting on local authority land that has been neglected, purely out of a desire to make their own urban environment more pleasant.
"I think there is a slight change in terms of radicalism and in terms of planting in spaces where people wouldn't before.
"With the Heygate estate, that is an estate where thousands of people lived, they have all been evicted now bar a very small number who are hanging on in there and if you go there it is just absolutely crazy, all these empty windows, it is just a sixties estate that people say, 'went wrong'.
"They are developing the land to create tower blocks now. But whilst it is being developed the community groups there have changed the old gardens into allotments, reclaimed that and they are working with Southwark Council and moving them around when things get demolished.
"I think that kind of activity is very different and I think it is a response to the environmental changes and the economic decline and there are a lot of factors feeding into that."
Making these ideas materialise has inspired new traineeships funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund's (HLF) Skills for the Future budget, in heritage and sustainability management and horticulture.
The museum's strength in the sustainable movement is evident with a recent Harvest day with the Incredible Edible Lambeth Project. As I walked around, even the smell of the café's home made bread was a sign of this cottage industry revival. They were ahead of the game.
"When we applied to the HLF for funding, sustainability was a really small bubble. Even in the eighteen months since then it has grown, as a movement it is really increasing in momentum so we hope there will be jobs for our trainees when they graduate. They may have to carve out their own niche it depends how quickly things move," Jess said.
The changes are rapid, but as with design and garden styles they evolve and disappear.
"It is ephemeral so we have set ourselves the task of attempting to archive important gardens or the work of important garden designers for future generations," Jess said.
"That is something that we are really excited about and think that it is really going to form the core of our next phase of development we think there is a very real need for it. I suppose we are trying to frame garden design within the gallery context and give it the respect that we feel it is due as an art form and really investigate who the people are that are behind this."
There is a lot of energy and will to do so, the museum is thriving on the great debates around sustainability and the environment and how to bring this to the city.
"Christopher Woodward, the Director, says it is like the doors are ajar and we can push it open," Jess said.
"It really feels like that. So that's why we have put this show on, we are running it until April and we really really hope that people will come in and engage with it."
Outside I pass through the recreation of a 17th Century Knot Garden by the historic designer the Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury. She had access to lists of seeds, flowers and trees from John Tradescant at Hatfield house.
Now surrounded by traffic sounds, the garden is a place for reflection, with lavender, rose arches, a spiral topiary in the centre of box hedging and stone seating.
I walked back to the Lambeth North station, and as a couple pass and return to gaze at the road map looking for the garden museum now it is my turn to point them in the right direction.
Related: Christopher Woodward home and dry in the Garden Museum
From Garden City to Green City at the London Garden Museum
Comments