Landscape and Green Spaces in the Midlands: new directions in garden history

Centre for Midlands History and Cultures Annual Conference

Keynote speaker: Dr Clare Hickman (Reader in Environmental and Medical History Newcastle University)

Multifareous and Diverse Forms: sensing the past in landscape history 

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the conference Landscape and Green Spaces: Garden History in the West Midlands held at the University of Birmingham. The Conference and resulting edited collection demonstrated how the study of green spaces can reveal more about both local and national themes in the history of the Midlands. At the same time it aimed to stimulate further movement away from what had been acknowledged as garden history’s traditionally narrow focus on the ‘great men’ designers and a few key sites.

But much has changed in the decade since 2014. The study of garden history has continued to take new directions and there is plenty to celebrate, to excite and to stimulate in the new research paths that have emerged over the last ten years. There has been a retreat from a concentration on the aesthetics of design towards seeing gardens and the activity of gardening within wider social, economic, political, and cultural contexts. Gardens are now better understood as part of the shaping of urban as well as rural landscapes influenced by scientific, technological, industrial, medical, intellectual and climate developments and their history is benefitting from the insights of scholars drawn from a wide range of disciplines.

This conference brings together academics, especially postgraduates and early career researchers, independent scholars, and heritage, museum and archive professionals who are researching any aspect of the history of gardens and green spaces in the Midlands to raise new questions and to explore new directions.

Full programme to follow.