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🌿🐚 English Garden Eccentrics 🐚🌿What do shell temples, miniature mountains, smoking altars and fantastical follies have in common?
They are all part of the wonderfully eccentric story of the English garden — and this May you can explore that world at Strawberry Hill with one of the leading historians of landscape and garden design.✨
Join us for a special evening talk with Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, landscape architect and author of the acclaimed book English Garden Eccentrics. 🌳 Through extraordinary gardens and the fascinating personalities who created them, Todd will reveal how landscapes became expressions of imagination, obsession, and individuality.
Among these characters is Horace Walpole, whose Gothic villa 🏰 and garden at Strawberry Hill embodied the spirit of playful invention. Walpole and his collaborator Richard Bentley designed a spectacular shell seat — a theatrical half-clam bench that once stood in the garden. 🐚
✨ This event is also a fundraiser for our Shell Seat Appeal.
Proceeds will help us recreate Walpole’s remarkable shell bench and return this whimsical feature to the Strawberry Hill garden.
📅 Thursday 28 May 2026
📍 Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham
🕕 6–7pm including Q&A
🥂 £20 (includes a drink)
🎟 Book your ticket:
strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/garden-eccentrics
🐚 Support the Shell Seat Appeal:
strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/shell-seat
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Event Venue
268, Waldegrave Road, Twickenham, United Kingdom
Tickets
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