Derek Jarman made some beautiful artistic films, including Caravaggio, The Tempest and Orlando. Many people, however, believe that his greatest artistic achievement was the exquisite garden he created at his home, Prospect Cottage, in Dungeness, Kent.
Indeed, the director, who died in 1994, once said about it: “Every flower is a triumph. I’ve had more fun from this place than I’ve had with anything else in my life. I should have been a gardener.”
Jarman’s garden is a glorious flowering of lavender, daffodils, sea holly, yellow rocket, poppies, sea kale, viper’s bugloss and teasels. These blooms enrich the sparse shingle beach on which the former fisherman’s cottage sits. Hard by the Dungeness nuclear power station, the property is constructed from tarred boards and has striking yellow window frames. Studded with sculptures fashioned from driftwood, its garden is as notable for being an artwork as a horticultural accomplishment.
Left: Derek Jarman, Prospect Cottage Garden at Dungeness, Kent, UK, designed from 1986 Photo: Howard Sooley, 1993. Right: Piet Oudolf Garden at Vitra Design Museum. Photo courtesy of Vitra Design Museum.
This extraordinary space is one of the key exhibits highlighted in Garden Futures: Designing with Nature, a new show at V&A Dundee. The colourful exhibition guides visitors through the history of gardens and garden design. Emphasising the power of horticulture to inspire, it covers the 20th century to the present day. It also examines the future of these magical spaces.
Featuring pioneering projects by such multicultural innovators as Jarman, Piet Oudolf, Mien Ruys and Eden Project Scotland, the exhibition cultivates the notion that a garden is much more than a haven. It is also an outdoor laboratory where theories about a more sustainable future can be put to the test.
Including an eclectic collection of objects, paintings, textiles, sculpture, interior design, fashion, drawings and photographs, the show underscores how the appeal of gardens has proved inspirational to artists, writers and designers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Duncan Grant and William Morris.
Community-led projects in Scotland, such as Oban’s Seaweed Gardens, are on show, alongside work by Charles Jencks and the garden designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd at Maggie’s Centre, Dundee.
This flourishing exhibition bears out one of Jarman’s other assertions: “Some gardens are paradises.”
Author: James Rampton
Garden Futures: Designing with Nature
V&A Dundee
1 Riverside Esplanade, Dundee DD1 4EZ
17th May 2025 – 25th January 2026
More information and tickets, HERE.
Lead image: Stefano Boeri, Bosco Verticale, Milan, 2014
Other unmissable exhibitions to check out this season: David Hockney 25, Turner: In Light and Shade, and Stephen Cox: Myth.
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