V&A Dundee has announced Garden Futures: Designing with Nature, a UK-first exhibition exploring modern garden design history. The exhibition will unearth the important role of gardens and show how outdoor spaces can shape a greener, more imaginative future.
Garden Futures: Designing with Nature will open on 17 May 2025 and run until 26 January 2026, exploring gardens from across the globe and how they have influenced today’s design. Highlighting key moments of inspiration and innovation in gardening and garden design from the 20th century to present day, as well as artworks and design inspired by gardens, Garden Futures will consider the garden as much more than a place to retreat, but also a place where ideas for a more sustainable future can be tried and tested. It will feature some of the world’s most pioneering gardens alongside the work of international designers, landscape architects and artists who think of gardens as places to test ideas to make a better world.
This colour-filled exhibition will take visitors on an illuminating journey exploring the history and future of gardens, looking at examples of groundbreaking gardens by visionaries including Piet Oudolf, Mien Ruys, Derek Jarman and Eelco Hooftman. A collection of ceramics, fashion, painting, textiles, sculpture, interior design, drawings and photographs shows how gardens’ enduring allure influences artists, writers and designers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Duncan Grant and William Morris.
Community-led projects in Scotland, including Maxwell Community Garden, part of the Grow Dundee food growing and community garden network, and Oban’s Seaweed Gardens, will be featured alongside work by Charles Jencks and the garden designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd at Maggie’s Centre, Dundee.
The exhibition will also at the future of gardens, offering insight into their power and how outdoor spaces can contribute to a better future.
Garden Futures: Designing with Nature is an exhibition by the Vitra Design Museum, the Wüstenrot Foundation, and the Nieuwe Instituut.
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