An exhibition at London's Garden Museum reveals the vital role nature played in the lives and work of Britain's radical creative collective, the Bloomsbury Group. Gardens are probably not the first thing that springs to mind when it comes to the women of the Bloomsbury Group . But as Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors at London's Garden Museum reveals, they played a vital role in the creative lives of the writers Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's artist sister Vanessa Bell and the arts patron Lady Ottoline Morrell.
Although very different in scale and ambition, their gardens were all places of sanctuary and experimentation where the women and their circles of friends and family were free to explore their innovative, and often radical, ideas – around creativity, life and love. "In very tangible ways, but also in some more ephemeral ways, we can really see how much their gardens shaped their work," says the writer and academic Claudia Tobin, who curated the exhibition. The connection is perhaps most evident at Charleston, the Sussex farmhouse that Vanessa Bell and her lover Duncan Grant retreated to in 1916, during World War One.
Bustling with family members and friends, it was a sociable and collaborative hive of creativity. The layout of the garden was designed by the painter and critic Roger Fry, with bold colours and simplified abstract designs. Fry was in part influenced by the Arts and Crafts garden designer Gertrude Jekyll who had worked on his .