The art of landscape has always been central to the Gardner Museum. Reflecting Isabella Stewart Gardner’s passion for horticulture and garden design, the museum’s interior courtyard is itself an astonishing work of art, combining plants, sculpture, and architectural elements.
History and Today
The unique interplay between the courtyard and the museum galleries offers visitors a fresh view of the courtyard from almost every room, inviting connections between art and landscape.
Isabella Gardner was an avid gardener, and created theme gardens—an Italian garden and a Japanese garden—at her summer house in Brookline, Massachusetts. She also shared her love of growing things with fellow Bostonians, filling the large bay window of her Beacon Street townhouse with changing plant displays and establishing an urban window box contest. Today her legacy continues as the lush central courtyard is regularly transformed with new plants and colors in nine dramatic seasonal displays, including the beloved Hanging Nasturtiums display each April.
Rooted in the museum’s rich landscape tradition, the Gardner’s Landscape Visions lectures focus on a common theme each season, offering challenging, engaging explorations of ideas in landscape by noted speakers. Additional educational offerings—including Ask the Gardener hours and special landscape tours for garden clubs—provide further opportunities to explore the changing courtyard displays and the art of landscape design and history at the Gardner.
Landscape Programs
Landscape Lectures
Landscape Lectures for 2012-13 feature six of the world's most significant landscape architects practicing today. Collectively their work embodies the best aspirations for landscape architecture as a medium of the public realm in the social life and environmental health of the contemporary city.
Ask the Gardener
Chat with a member of our landscape team – and
find out how we keep the courtyard in bloom all year long!
FREE with museum admission.
Keep an eye on the Museum's calendar for upcoming dates.
Landscape Tours
Bring your garden club or other group to the Gardner! Experience the
magic of the verdant courtyard, explore highlights of the collection on a private tour, and enjoy an informal discussion with a member of the museum's landscape staff. Call the Tour Manager at 617 278 5147 for more information.
Midwinter Tropics
Charles Waldheim/
Urban Agency
Consulting Curator of Landscape
JoAnn Robinson
Landscape Researcher
617 278 5160
landscaperesearcher@isgm.org
Ann Uppington
Landscape Researcher
617 278 5161
auppington@isgm.org
Stan Kozak
Chief Horticulturist
© 2012 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
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