Join our latest Urban Gardening Club event as experts Cleve West and Sheila Das take a look at achievable & affordable urban food gardening. Cleve and Sheila  will be looking at topics, including:
 

• The best plants to grow in an urban climate
• Techniques such as adopting ‘no dig’ gardening
• How to attract wildlife and manage pests in an environmentally safe way

Travel back to the early 20th century and discover the nostalgia of daisies, mulberry bushes and conkers with the beautiful, coloured plates from Henry Robert Robertson’s book, Plants We Play With.

Date: Tuesday 24 September 2024
Time: 1.15pm–1.30pm
Price: Free to attend

See the Growing up in the garden Digital Collection >

Join Rare Books Librarian Jess, as we delve into the pages of Johann Hieronymous Kniphof’s 1758 work Botanica in originali seu herbarium vivum.

Discover the process and the beauty of the nature printed flowers which decorate the pages of this work.

Discover gardens through time in this new course, led by garden historian Francesca Murray, with the collections of the RHS Lindley Library.
Join us for all three sessions in this course, or sign up for a single session ticket.

Week 1 - Medieval Gardens and the Renaissance
Week 2 - Early Modern and Baroque Gardens
Week 3 - 18th Century and Landscape Gardens

Date: Monday 7/14/21 October 2024
Time: 11am–1pm

Discover the world of nature printing – a method which bedazzled the Victorians with the strangely lifelike and intricate images it produced. 

Try your hand at nature printing with artist Pia Östlund, inspired by the historic nature prints from the RHS Lindley Library collection.

For Londoners in the mid-nineteenth century, there were no guarantees that the food and drink they consumed was what it claimed to be.

Discover how RHS detectives exposed an underground world of adulterated coffee and unscrupulous retailers in this show and tell.

Delve into a history of plants at this talk by palaeobotanist Paul Kenrick, as we uncover:

• What does a palaeobotanist do, and how can we determine what the world once looked like?
• What do we know about the most ancient plants and the environment in which they lived?
• How we can understand climate change through plants as indicators.

Date: ​Tuesday 22 October 2024
Time: 6.30–8pm (doors open at 6pm)
Price: £10 or pay what you can

Join the Lindley Library and author Ursula Buchan as we celebrate Valerie Finnis’ 100^th birthday (31 October 1924 - 17 October 2006).

We will be discussing the life and legacy of the pioneering gardener, photographer, mentor, alpine plant enthusiast and lorry driver.

Discover her photography with the RHS Digital Collections.

Discover gardens through time in this new course, led by garden historian Francesca Murray, with the collections of the RHS Lindley Library.
Join us for all three sessions in this course, or sign up for a single session ticket.

Week 1 – 19th Century Picturesque and the Victorians
Week 2 – Edwardian Gardens and World War One
Week 3 – 20th Century Modernism and Media

Date: Monday 11/18/25 November 2024
Time: 11am–1pm
 

Whether you are a community group, allotment neighbours or gardening interest group, sign up for a free tour of the RHS Lindley Library.

Dates: Tuesdays throughout the year
Times: 11am–12noon or 2pm–3pm
Price: Free to attend

Now taking bookings from November
Drop us an email to book >