A Garden Journey

On Wednesday I had arranged to meet an old friend at The Garden Museum in Lambeth. We both wanted to see the Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors exhibition, and to have lunch. A very long lunch. It felt like a solid plan and the weather was in our favour. The sun shone on our righteous pleasure.

I had been to The Garden Museum before, but not for about a quarter of a century, so the time was ripe for a revisit. I jumped on the Jubilee Line up at Canary Wharf and poked my head above ground at Westminster, where I immediately regretted my life choices. I kicked myself for not having made a bit more effort and gone to Vauxhall, where there are no longer any pleasure gardens, but also no rickshaws covered in hot pink fun fur and crowds of suicidal tourists with selfie sticks who seem to think that Westminster Bridge is theirs for the taking. It certainly disproves Wordsworth:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

I wove through hundreds of exceedingly dull souls, all of whom were so intent on capturing the majesty that they thought nothing of almost being mown down by infuriated black cab drivers, or punched by people who actually had places to go. i.e. me.

I dropped down onto the South Bank once I’d crossed the bridge and headed for Lambeth. It’s quieter along that stretch of the river. For a while you beat the bounds of St. Thomas’ hospital which has spectacular views to make up for the sorry business of dying. Running along the boundary is the National Covid Memorial Wall, which at a third of a mile long and consisting of two hundred and forty thousand hand painted hearts filled with the names of those who lost their lives to Covid, is a quietly devastating journey to make, even on a gloriously sunny morning.

Rounding the corner by Lambeth Palace I resisted the urge to go in and share my thoughts on the current state of religion in this country with the arch bishop of Canterbury. He, no doubt, has better things to do with his time than listen to a sweaty woman ranting about a very partial approach to equality in the modern Church of England. I congratulated myself on how many times in one morning I had resisted getting fighty and collapsed on a bench outside the Garden Museum to wait for my friend.

The first thing to like about the Garden Museum is that it actually has a garden. It’s housed in an old church and the church yard has been turned into a beautifully planted space with some really stunning modern, glass greenhouses that look like sculptures but which actually house plants. There is a modern extension to the building which has a conference space and a restaurant. No attempt has been made to age the space in keeping with the church, but there is such clever use of glass, wood, stone and heaps of planting that it’s serenely appropriate and incredibly pleasing. I found myself calming down within moments of sitting there.

The Museum is only small and it’s £15 to get in, but if you have a National Art Pass, it’s half price. As Art Fund are offering £15 for a three month pass at the moment and it gets you into hundreds of venues for free or at a great discount, it’s well worth signing up. I think it was well worth £7.50 for a visit, but because of the size alone, I’d have been a bit sad to have spent £15 to get in.

Inside the church, modern architecture sits against the original ecclesiastical features to create interesting exhibition spaces and rooms that still allow you to appreciate the wealth of architecture around you. There’s a small library where researchers were busy with boxes and boxes of slides. You can watch them working through the window, which is how I like to experience work best these days. Upstairs is the permanent collection of works and downstairs was the Bloomsbury exhibition. I’d already been to Sissinghurst, Charleston and a fleeting visit to Monks House gardens, so I wasn’t sure if I’d just end up seeing things I had seen before, but there were plenty of paintings I either hadn’t seen or hadn’t remembered, even in such a small place.

I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to see more of Vanessa Bell’s work. I have been slowly developing a slight obsession with her since seeing the painting she did of Virginia Woolf next to a portrait of her at the National Portrait Gallery. I’ve been to visit them several times now and I’m fascinated by how even though her portrait of Virginia is so impressionistic and doesn’t really have clear facial features, you can immediately tell who it is, and the fact that with the two paintings side by side, you can see that they were sisters. I welcome any and all opportunities to fall deeper into a Vanessa Bell rabbit hole.

The gift shop, which is an important part of any visit, was very good and far too tempting for a woman who lives on a boat and cannot house any more giant books about art without running a serious risk of sinking. I went and sat in a beautiful little space full of cut flowers and squashy chairs while my friend did serious damage to her bank account.

We were having such a nice time we decided to stay and eat lunch in the restaurant once she had finished her purchases. It was a magnificent decision. I’m still thinking about that meal, several days later. We sat opposite the kitchen, which had a huge counter where we watched the chefs making the next batch of the deliciously chewy, salty, oil crisped ciabatta bread we were eating. Heaping bowls of artichoke heads looking like roof bosses from the space we’d just left were being despatched with speed. Jugs of herbs, possibly pulled from the garden outside, dotted the workspace and all the most delicious sights matching all the most delicious smells made it a small, but perfectly formed paradise.

We ate chunks of earthy, firm beetroot, smushed against ripples of curd cheese, flecked with dill and pepper. I devoured a brimming dish of fresh tagliatelle, slicked with cream and perfectly cooked girolles. Still talking, talking, talking because we had so much to catch up on, we drank wine and wiped our plates clean with ciabatta before deciding that we did have room for dessert. I licked clean a bowl of macerated strawberries with a yogurt mousse that tasted like clouds made by angels, accompanied by a shard of crisp, sweet, rye biscuit that snapped to the touch. It was absolute heaven. Better than art, and I don’t say that lightly.

Rich, strong coffee to keep us going kicked us out onto the street where we walked, still talking, to the Imperial War Museum. We wandered in so that I could say hello to Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer, but mostly so that we could sit outside in the rose garden and keep the day going for as long as possible until home beckoned.