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It's unbelievable, it's unfamiliar, it's NYBG like never before! Wonderland: Curious Nature transforms our 250 acres through the sights, settings, and scents of the classic story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. From mind-bending horticultural displays fit for a queen to unusual and outsized art installations, the wonderfully weird beauty of Alice's world of imagination is made real with thousands of technicolor flowers across the Garden.

To celebrate this enchanting exhibition, this symposium will explore the themes, concepts, and alluring wonder of the English garden in two compelling sessions featuring writer and historian Ambra Edwards and creator of the UK's Wildside, Keith Wiley.

Curiouser and Curiouser: The Ever-Changing English Garden
Ambra Edwards | 10-11 am
For as long as gardens have fed our bellies, they have also fed our imaginations. From the austere cloister gardens of medieval monasteries intended to encourage meditation and prayer to the most exciting and innovative gardens in England today, award winning writer and garden historian Ambra Edwards will take us on a historical tour of the English garden. Along the way, we'll encounter gardens of love and of protest, fantasy worlds created variously to express longings or to provoke violent emotions.

Edwards will trace the links between garden-making and art, literature and memory, and celebrate the garden as an imaginative space for hopes and dreams, for exploration and transformation.

Wildside: Landscape of Memory and Dreams
Keith Wiley | 11:30-12:30pm
Hailed by many as the most imaginative and adventurous garden in England today, Wildside, was created by plantsmen and designer Keith Wiley. By manipulating scale, Wiley makes a three-acre site feel much larger than it is, evoking deep mysterious valleys, distant mountain tops, and creating a journey of water from a sacred spring to the oxbow lakes of the plain. His aim is to capture the essence of remembered landscapes, ranging across the globe from the Temblor hills of California to the rockscapes of Utah and from the flower meadows of South Africa to the mossy walls and tumbledown barns of his English childhood.

Wiley will share the garden's evolution over the last 24 years from a flat, featureless field to a rich and complex landscape that not only offers ecological niches and a vast array of plants, but also creates a satisfying dreamscape of rare emotional power.

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Schedule:	Saturday, June 8, 2024
Times:	10:00am-12:30pm EDT
	View Full Schedule  |   View Full Schedule
Meeting Date Start Time End Time Saturday, June 8, 2024 10:00am 12:30pm Meeting Date Start Time End Time Saturday, June 8, 2024 10:00am 12:30pm
Speaker:	Ambra Edwards Ambra Edwards Ambra Edwards Ambra Edwards read English at Oxford University, discovering a love of gardens among the ancient colleges that so inspired Lewis Carroll. Three times named UK Garden Journalist of the Year, she is a regular contributor to the UK's leading newspapers and garden journals. She has written widely on garden history, including The Story of the English Garden for the UK's National Trust, The Plant Hunter's Atlas for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and a comprehensive global history of gardening, The Story of Gardening, co-written with Penelope Hobhouse. Irritated by the lack of respect shown to the multi-talented gardening profession, in 2017 she published Head Gardeners: it was voted Inspirational Garden Book of the Year. Her latest book is out in Fall 2024, The Botanic Garden, featuring, of course, NYBG, will tell the story of how the world's historic botanic gardens are working together to combat biodiversity collapse. Keith Wiley Keith Wiley Keith Wiley Keith Wiley first came to the world's attention for the naturalistic landscapes he created as Head Gardener at The Garden House in Devon, in the South West of England. For the last 24 years he has been developing his own garden, Wildside, evolving a style of gardening based on modifying natural landscapes from around the globe. Wildside has been described as a 'revelation', a 'tour de force' and the best example of 'leading-edge horticulture' in the UK. He is the author of three books, and has lectured widely both in the USA and around the world.
Location:	NYBG, Ross Lecture Hall 2900 Southern Boulevard Bronx, NY 10458
Session Number:	244GAR830

Wonderland Symposium ticket
Saturday, June 8, 2024
10:00am-12:30pm EDT
	Non-Member : $39.00 Member : $35.00	Ticket Quantity

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