Viewing Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party at Garden Museum

The perfect high summer show for those who want to escape urbanity without leaving the city: Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party at the Garden Museum is a whimsical, wistful tour through the iconic British fashion photographer’s fascination with flowers and gardens.

This exhibition not only spotlights the ways flora and fauna made their way into Beaton’s photographs but the wider role they played in his wider, less known cultural pursuits, showcased in drawings, painted backdrops, set design, sketches for ballet costumes, and floral installations he created for parties – using flowers from his own gardens at Ashcombe House and Reddish House in Wiltshire.

It’s through Beaton’s engagement with his gardens that we might come closer to understanding the vitality of his creative practice, and the colours and compositions he plumped for in his pictures. In an interview with House Beautiful magazine in 1979, Beaton declared: “My garden is the greatest joy of my life, after my friends. Both are worth living for.”