Museum of Gardens and Wandering in Wapping

Monday, June 15, 2009
London

I love museums and I love gardens (and gardening); so it was only natural that I should make an attempt to see the Museum of Gardens on the south side of the Thames near Lambeth Bridge. I had wandered, by happenstance, through this spot, a few weeks ago, on the Jubilee Walk and had decided to come back, time permitting.

So, though I spent the morning transcribing an interview I did with Valentine in Wembley, bringing email correspondence up to date, taking a shower and preparing a packed lunch before I left the house at 1. 30pm, I manage to make the time this afternoon to get to the Museum. For some reason, I thought that Lambeth Bridge was really far away--must have been because the last time I had walked to it from Central London, and it had taken what seemed like ages to get there.

Dallying in the Museum of Gardens:
The Museum of Gardens is located in a most unique setting--the former, now deconsecrated, Church of St. Mary's at Lambeth which dates from the 1500s. It sits right next door to Lambeth Palace (which is probably now used only as administrative buildings). The church was converted into a museum in 1977 when the tombs of the two John Trancesdants, father and son, famous Renaissance gardeners, were found in the churchyard. It was decided to honor their contribution to horticulture by creating a garden and a museum of gardens around their tombstones. These rather faded reminders of their time on earth still stand in the church yard but they are surrounded by a wonderful Elizabethan Knot Garden about which, I am sure, they would be delighted.

My Metropolitan Museum ID card was honored at this spot and I was able to get in for free. It is a really small museum and I don't understand what can justify the entry fee of six pounds. On the ground floor, there is a wonderful current special exhibition called The Highgrove Florilegium--apparently, this is a horticultural term for an attempt to capture on paper through paint a visual representation of every specimen of fruit, flower and plant available in a single garden. It is a custom, it seems, that has persisted for many centuries. This current one, is an attempt to do the same at the Gardens of Highgrove, the estate occupied by Charles, Prince of Wales, and his wife Camilla, which is close to the town of Tetbury. The Prince invited botanical artists from around the world to his gardens. They created their work (almost all of them quite brilliantly,I might add) and the originals were then printed and bound in two huge volumes that comprise the Highgrove Florilegium. These are both on display in this exhibition--one closed, the other open, to show the exquisite quality of the printed reproductions as well as the marbled jacket design. On the walls, in this small exhibit, are about sixty of the original framed botanical paintings and they are quite superbly done.

My next item of interest was the cafe through which I walked to get out into the Knot Garden. There were several people who had arrived there before me. They found themselves chairs and garden tables and sipped their coffee slowly on what was another glorious summer's day in London. I found a stone bench placed right beneath an interesting stone sculpture that remembers the contribution of the garden's founders and munched on my sandwich of blue cheese, parma ham, tomato and lettuce on walnut bread. It was delicious and very satisfying indeed and my view of the garden was superlative.

With lunch done, I walked around the lovely knot garden taking many pictures. Elizabethan Knot Gardens were planned around a complicated formal design formed by yew and boxwood hedges. The spaces left in-between the curlicues of these patterns were then filled with a variety of flowering plants. I was delighted to notice that the flowers that we usually see in the States only in the middle of July are already here in full bloom--lavender (loads of it), foxgloves and delphiniums, hydrangeas, roses, many different varieties of salvia and the loveliest poppies (in vivid red, soft pink and deep purple) that grow tall and stately in this country.

I really do feel pleased with myself that I planned my adventures in London so well. In the heart of winter when it was cold, snowing or pouring chilly rain, I closeted myself in the city's museums and studied gallery after gallery with the utmost pleasure. Now that the weather is so perfect, I am exploring her outdoor marvels--and since the English love gardens with such a passion and lavish so much time and sweat equity on them, they are always delightful, no matter how simple. In the next couple of days, I will be visiting a few more gardens, each of which is a different example of the types of gardening and landscaping techniques that influenced the rest of the world.

Upstairs, the museum has its permanent collection on display--this is nothing to shout about. It is a random sample of gardening tools, seed packets through the decades and paintings featuring gardens. I was very pleased to see two things: a special stained glass window inserted into the original Gothic tracery of the church window featuring the Transcendant brothers at various tasks in the garden and the original desk of the famous English gardener Gertrude Jekyll who was best known for her color artistry in the flower bed. She worked closely with her friend Edwin Lutyens (architect of New Delhi and landscape designer) to create beautiful gardens during the Edwardian age. This desk was designed by her and used in her study for several decades.

I did browse also around the shop but apart from a few interesting books, there was nothing really to write home about. I left the Museum of Gardens in about an hour and a half and but for the fact that the entry fee is so steep, I would encourage anyone who lived or worked in the area to make the time to simply linger among the scented flowers in the Knot Garden.

Loads of Luck at the National Theater:
The next item on my agenda was a visit to the National Gallery where I hoped very much to be able to exchange the tickets I had purchased to see Helen Mirren in Phedre. Now these are probably the hottest theater tickets of the entire summer season and I had been so delighted to find them on the very last day--August 1 (the show has since been extended for another three weeks, due to public demand). However, since I am leaving the UK to return to the USA on July 31, I could not, of course, use the tickets I had booked. When I had called the theater to find out if they could help me, all they offered was to take them back for theater credit--no money would be returned to me.

I might have given up and simply sold them to a friend...but then I met Matt, my NYU colleague, who is also a press theater critic. He suggested I go personally to the theater and find out if they would exchange them for me. Hence, my mission. I have to say I went there with very slim hopes and a prayer on my lips--not only was I hoping to find tickets that had been returned by someone (fat chance!) but on one of the 2-3 nights only on which both Llew and I would be free and in London to use them.

Well, I guess the theater gods were rooting for me because not only were 2 tickets available but I did actually get them on an evening when we would both be in London together and had no plans already lined up!!! How fortunate was that???!!! I could have kissed the clerk except that he was so forbidding! Well, a few minutes later, I was walking out of the theater with a new set of tickets. So Llew and I will be seeing Phedre together after all and as the Bard would have said, All's Well That Ends Well!

A Walk in Wapping:
The very first time I had heard of Wapping was on a walk with my former neighbors Tim and Barbara way back in September of last year. They had invited me to join them on a long walk along the Thames Path to the dockside settlement of Wapping for a Chinese lunch at the Pearl River Restaurant that offered lovely views of Canary Wharf across the Thames.

Well, this time I went there with the intention of taking the second last self-guided walk in my book Frommer's 24 Great Walks in London. This one began at the Shadwell Docklands Light Railway Station but I realized that I could also get there on the red buses--and that was what I did. A bus to Aldwych, another one to Aldgate and a third to Shadwell deposited me exactly where I wanted to begin.

I have to say that this was one of the strangest London walks I have taken. For one thing, it took me into parts of the city that were largely deserted, but never scary. I was starting the walk rather late in the day (it was 4. 50 when I began). But then it remains bright until at least 8. 00 pm which left me ample time to do the 3. 5 miles walk.

For the most part, I skirted the Thames Path, winding in and out of the Docks (St. Katherine's Dock, Tobacco Dock, Oliver's Wharf, etc.) from where the extensive trading that made Great Britain great was carried out! At Tobacco Wharf, for instance, tea, tobacco, silks, china, etc. were loaded on to ships that travelled far and wide around the globe. The tea that was unceremoniously dumped into Boston Harbor during that infamous 'Tea Party' was probably loaded here! Today, the area is completely deserted though two replica tea clippers with interesting figureheads stand in dry dock. I noticed that a lot of the buildings--former warehouses--have been refurbished and converted into offices--there were interior designers and graphic artists with premises in the area...but it hasn't yet caught on fully as a feasible site for contemporary trading.

I loved the very narrow alleys that ended in Old Stairs and New Stairs that led down to the Thames--because the tide was in, I could not see the golden sand that forms a beach along the banks. However, it was so easy to imagine how busy those alleys and stairs might have been in a previous era when most traffic in London was conducted along the river and not on the roads--the river was faster and far safer. I could so easily imagine women travelers lifting their voluminous skirts as they climbed those embankments that would lead them to their homes after a shopping spree in London.

In those days, these were busy parts, bustling with human activity and commercial enterprise. Pubs and inns dotted the waterfront and remnants of that feverish past are evident in a couple of watering holes that still stand such as the Town of Ramsgate, the Jack Smith and The Prospect of Whitby--the last is the city's oldest waterfront pub. I had to go inside and check out the unique bar--a stainless steel counter that sits on top of great oak kegs of beer. Outside, from the terrace, you can actually see the gallows with a noose in place that gives a sinister hint of the pub's less salubrious past. There is a huge Ingelnook fireplace and cubby-hole like rooms complete with exposed beams and a low hung ceiling--this is the kind of place you see in films that recreate the Elizabethan era. There were tables and chairs sprinkled on the waterfront terrace and I ordered myself half a pint of Guinness and took a long rest from my long walk. Nothing could have been more welcome (though I have to say that I was disappointed to find that the female Eastern European bar tender had no idea how to pour a draft Guinness and did not leave it to rest for the requisite 118 seconds to let the head settle before filling it to the top).

Earlier in the walk, I had visited the Church of St. George in the East--a Nicholas Hawksmoor church (he was a student of Sir Christopher Wren and is responsible for a few landmark churches in the city) that was bombed during the Blitz and then reconstructed within the old shell. It is quite ingeniously done, the two bits seamlessly yoked together. As with all old churches, the tombstones have been moved to the periphery of graveyards that have been converted into play space for the neighborhood children (most of whom were Bangladeshi, if one went by their dress and the Bengali language they spoke, for the area is also crammed with apartment buildings and council house developments).

Overall, it was a very interesting walk indeed. The streets are narrow and almost entirely cobbled--this provides the old world charm that makes the place look completely different from anything in Central London. Some streets have the old gas light lamp posts and the aged look of quarters that have known a great deal of history. I would strongly suggest an exploration of these parts. They evoke a time and a world that is so different from our own and are yet so intrinsically a part of this city and its developing fortunes through the centuries.

I was back home at 7. 30, which allowed me to catch up with my email, write this blog, eat my dinner and complete a couple of pending chores.