Natural Beauty: Exploring Wilderness Gardens

Discover historic and contemporary art works exploring the eighteenth-century craze for wilderness gardens and how this relates to Beningbrough’s woodland garden.

In the year garden designer Andy Sturgeon is helping to revitalise Beningbrough’s Wilderness Garden with enhanced planting and opening of views and vistas, artist Laura Ellen Bacon will create large-scale site-specific sculptures inside Beningbrough Hall.

Bacon, who has previously exhibited at Chatsworth and The Holbourne Museum, creates organic willow forms, full of movement, inspired by nature and rooted to place.

Nine historic pieces from the National Trust collection including paintings, books and sculptures, will explore wilderness gardens through time. These gardens were designed to be a sensory experience, and the exhibition follows suit with the scent of fragrant willow and readings of specially commissioned poetry.

Laura Ellen’s practise is grounded in drawing, which she uses to respond to natural surroundings, and develop her ideas. A new drawing studio invites visitors to get creative and put pen to paper.

The exhibition runs from 2 September 2025 – 12 April 2026 (on open days). See website for full opening details and what to expect when you visit.