Benton End: A Paradise of Pollen and Paint

2 Jun - 20 Sep 2026

Garden Museum, 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB

Booking information

This summer at the Garden Museum, step back in time to a radical art school in 1950s Suffolk.

Enter the gallery to find yourself in the heart of the home at Benton End, the house, garden and art school led by artist plantsman Cedric Morris and his life partner, artist Arthur Lett-Haines.

Here you’ll meet a cast of friends gathered round the dining table: Benton End art students Lucian Freud and Joan Warburton, Cedric’s horticultural protégée gardener Beth Chatto, and Lett’s culinary inspiration, the cookery writer Elizabeth David.

The exhibition will explore Benton End’s impact on a generation of artists and gardeners, with paintings, drawings, photographs, correspondence, personal belongings and objects from the school in its heyday telling the story of a place where learning, creative freedom and horticultural experimentation came together.

I left this evocative and convivial show craving ratatouille, resolving to plant irises and level the earth at the back of the garden for a greenhouse of my own
★★★★

Laura Freeman, The Times

evokes something of a magical time and place
★★★★

Melanie McDonagh, The London Standard