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26-02-09 |
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Caroline Holmes Garden Historian - Lecturer, Author, Broadcaster, Designer |
Presented with title of ‘Ambassador’ by Garden Organic in July 2007 for wide-ranging work for the organisation.
Selected as one of the 50 most influential women in Suffolk in 2007 by the Suffolk Magazine.
Member of the Garden Media Guild, Garden Writers Association (USA) and Past Chairman of the Herb Society
Lecturer
Lecturer for NADFAS, Martin Randall Travel, the Royal Horticultural Society, The English Gardening School, West Dean, County Garden Trusts, the Hardy Plant Society, NCCPG, Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms as well as specialist days and lectures running nationally and internationally. See Diary Events 2009 and 2010
University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education
Course Director on a wide range of modular, part-time, residential and international programmes. See Diary Events 2009 and 2010
Theatre Royal, Bury St. Edmunds
New presentation – see Diary Events 2009 and 2010 - How does your garden grow, Mr. Shakespeare? With fragrant smells, and poisonous hells, and luscious woodbine gently entwisted – comedy and tragedy in the world of plants.
The United States of America
Presentations during 2007 included speaking and judging at the Atlanta, Little Rock and Philadelphia Flower Shows as well as conferences in Illinois and Michigan.
May 2004 included the opening of the newly updated Children’s Zoo in Erie as well as Toledo Botanical Gardens. During February/March 2003 appeared in Florida, Georgia, Arkansas and at The Philadelphia Flower Show where she regularly judges herbs and speaks. In March 2002 spoke in Michigan and Ohio. In September 2000 returned to Longwood Gardens PA to run a workshop, lecture at Ladew Topiary Gardens, MD and judge herbs at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Harvest Show. In 1998 toured Michigan, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia and Long Island, then Longwood Gardens and the Philadelphia Unit of the Herb Society of America. Has also spoken in New York, New Orleans and Washington DC.
In 1999 hosted an Educational and Traveling Seminar of England for the Herb Society of America. In May 2003 she devised and led 'Gardens in the French Manner' around the Loire and Paris for HSA members. In 2005 they toured Scotland and England for A Scottish and English Tapestry of Gardens and in April 2008 A Breton Canvas based in Brittany.
Broadcaster
Radio and Television
During August 2008 filmed for two BBC Gardeners World Specials: the first on Cottage Gardens, presented by Rachel de Thame, Caroline outlined how the Victorians rediscovered the joys of more naturalistic gardening and the saving of cottage plants – it won the Garden Media Guilds Television Award. The second is about Women and Gardens in which she looks at importance of Tudor and Stuart ladies, housewives and weeders in the domestic garden, scheduled for August 2009.
In April and May 2008 Caroline presented a series on BBC Radio Four - A Sunparched Country - for which she travelled around Australia interviewing people at the vanguard of innovative, practical adaptations to the new reality of climate change. They included architects, landscape designers, horticulturists, soil geologists, aboriginal weather forecasters, communities and home gardeners.
In 2007 Caroline researched and appeared in the video accompanying the Dig For Victory exhibition at the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. She co-presented the series Glorious Gardens for Anglia and Meridian TV in 2004 which filmed throughout Anglia and South-eastern England. She filmed garden history strands for Anglia TV's Inside and Out during 2000. In 1999 she advised and appeared on a garden history series Gardens of the Millennium produced by Meridian TV and the History Channel. NHK (Japanese National Broadcasting) filmed a 50 minute programme (broadcast in Japan in July 1998, repeated in 2001) on Caroline's work and lifestyle in her gardens, house, office and surrounding countryside.
Watch me making a salad from my garden on www.youtube.com/cookingtipstv
The BBC Radio Four series 'New Shoots, Old Tips' was first broadcast in 2001 and repeated in 2002, it received the Garden Writers' Guild 'Radio Broadcast of the Year Award 2001'. A second series followed in November and December 2002. She presented the series 'Imperial Gardens' for BBC Radio Four in 2000.
Broadcasts on BBC Radio 4 have included the series Gardens of Italy, Gardens of France and Gardens of Spain 2004-6. Inserts for Woman's Hour include Dovecotes and Dung; Rose Romance; Black flowered plants; The Night Garden - awarded GWG 2000 Radio Broadcast of the Year. Also Winter Gardening (Colour, Berries, Scent and Evergreens); Nuts (Almonds, Hazelnuts, Walnuts and Chestnuts); Bulbs; Classic Climbers (Clematis, Honeysuckle, Roses, Wisteria); Propagation; Ivy, Camellias, Lilies, Orchids, Tulips, Roses, Sweet Peas, Women in Roman Gardens; The Town Garden. She also acts as an occasional commentator on plants for the World Service.
Author
Follies of Europe – Architectural Extravaganzas
Listed Number One Best Seller Summer 2008 under Art Architecture.
Inspired by Nic Barlow’s stunning photographs, the book traces the sheer folly of these architectural eccentricities in their development across Europe through Allegory and Fantasy, Classicism and Grandeur, Romanticism and Innovation to Modernism and Individuality. Follies ranging from the Renaissance initiation theme of the Château de la Batie d’Urfé through to the cutting edge IM Pei Pyramid near Marlborough.
Accompanied by exhibitions and lectures during 2008 at Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh; Birmingham Botanic Gardens; Petworth House and in 2009 Hove Museum and Art Gallery
Published by Antique Collectors Club in April 2008
Available in French as Folies et Fantaisies Architecturales d’Europe
Available in German as Von Lustschlössern, Tempeln und Ruinen
Why do Violets shrink? Answers to 280 thorny questions on the world of plants
Pithy answers to 280 wide-ranging questions on plants from the Garden of Eden to Mars in nine challenging chapters: Back to Roots; Myths and Legends; Extreme Plants and Record Breakers; Mating and Dating; Purposeful Plants; Naming and Shaming; Peculiar Pests and Beneficial Beasts; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; and On this Planet and beyond.
Violets shrink from the clumsy attentions of pollinating bees, self pollination being a tidier option. Plants’ flourishing patterns of sight and sound, with kaleidoscopic records and realities, are explored, questioned and answered. The plant’s green loving constituent, chlorophyll, attracts iron essential for our well being. How many pioneers died discovering that toxic is the filling of intoxication. Plants don’t do makeovers, they vividly and vibrantly survive, tenaciously evolving in hostile conditions.
Globally native plants have colourful legends with a core of truth. Wheat and maize are winners in the ancient myths stakes, plants with purpose, outstripped in consumption by rice. Flowers orchestrate sophisticated PR campaigns and even offer theme park rides to pollinators. Insect intelligence is measured by tongue length and pollinating bats curl away their prodigious tongues when not in use. Beneficial beasts have spread plants lured by the scent of sexual encounters or as incidental transport for wind blown pollen. Plants help our love lives: the scent of jasmine can make you more alluring and roots and shoots can pep up your vitality. Plants are used for shelter, medicine and making money.
Thornproof and thought provoking, plants have been probed from root-hair to exotic bloom, seed to fruit, on earth and in moondust.
Published by The History Press in April 2008 – see illustration
The not so little Book of Dung has had rave reviews – ‘This is a serious read for anyone interested in soil’, ‘This is a book for all the family, even members not yet reading will thrill to the colour photographs of the dung beetle’ and ‘… definitely a ‘bottom up’ view of history. The topic may have a stercoraceous stench but the prose is fragrant and a thoroughly enjoyable read’. Translated into Korean 2007 Sutton Publishing 2006, now The History Press
1001 Gardens you must see before you die – contributed 51 profiles 2006
Victorian Gardens a picture led book to inspire gardeners seeking Victorian style gardens, published by Schiffer Books in 2005
New Shoots, Old Tips sifts the humour from the humus in the quest for valid historic garden advice published by Frances Lincoln in 2004 in agreement with the BBC based on her series
Monet at Giverny explores his growing passion for plants and gardens brought to perfection in his 40 years at Giverny. The Artist’s Garden – Monet at Giverny was the keynote lecture at the 2007 SE Flower Show ‘The French Experience’ in Atlanta. It was BBC Radio Two Book of the Month and selected for the Evening Standard Christmas art books list. Published in the UK by Cassell & Co in August 2001, in the USA in May 2002 and in paperback in 2003. Translated into French and Norwegian
OUT OF PRINT
A Zest for Herbs written to inspire readers that there is more to herbs than green leaves with gorgeous photographs. 2004 Mitchell Beazley, as The Romantic Herb Garden in USA by Rizzoli
Icons of Garden Design in Prestel's Icon series was published in April 2001, Caroline wrote the introduction on the history of garden design, placing the 79 iconic gardens featured in a broader context. She wrote 19 profiles as well as helping to select the international contributors. Translated into German, Russian, Czech, Hungarian and Polish
Designer
Consultant designer specialising in evoking historical, artistic and symbolic references ranging from ornamental kitchen gardens, knots and Georgian carriage washes to Poison plants and Operatic Borders
Currently working on a series of small Tudor gardens inspired by the Renaissance Humanist idea of exterior expressions of the interior spiritual life – watch this space for where they are and when they will be open!
High House, Essex
In 2007 selected as the location for the Royal Opera House’s new Production Campus for the Performing Arts. An integral part of the future development and construction of the site is the provision of a series of outdoor spaces for a range of purposes including performance, informal meeting space, café area etc. Caroline has designed a traditional meadow and seventeenth century inspired knot, kitchen garden and quincunx orchard around house and barns. Her design for the Performance Lawns and Operatic Borders attempts to emulate a musical sense of exposition, development and recapitulation, slow moving harmonies arpeggiated with fast moving dots of plant colour.
Alnwick Walled Garden
Researched and devised the planting in the 'The Poison Garden' for The Alnwick Garden in Northumberland – one of Europe’s largest and most innovative creations. It was the subject of her address at the Herb Society of America’s Annual Meeting in 2005 and at the Illinois Specialty Crop Conference in 2007.
Yalding Organic Gardens, Maidstone, Kent
Caroline designed the first six in the chronology of gardens at Yalding Organic Gardens. The Medieval Garden incorporates three: the twelfth to fourteenth centuries are illustrated in the Apothecary Garden's regular chessboard design; the fifteenth in the contemplative and symbolic Paradise Garden; the sixteenth in the herb and box Knots and HDRA insignia.
William Cobbett Cottager's Garden re-creates Cobbett's Cottage Economy and English Gardener as well as horticultural views taken from his many pamphlets. Cobbett was greatly influenced by his frequent journeys to the States whose cultivation of corn particularly pleased him.
The Victorian Artisan's Garden displays the growing technology and availability of spare funds for formerly inaccessible luxuries such as greenhouses, cloches and annual bedding plants to the average householder.
The Gertrude Jekyll Edwardian borders are adapted from her 'Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden', taking garden styles back to a more natural drifting of height and colour.
'The creation of the historic gardens at Yalding' has been the subject of a London Royal Horticultural Society, Michigan Herbal Associates conference and Toledo Botanical Garden programme.
This site was last updated 26-02-09
