The art of landscape has always been central to the Gardner Museum. Reflecting Isabella Stewart Gardner’s passion for horticulture and garden design, the museum’s interior courtyard is itself an astonishing work of art, combining plants, sculpture, and architectural elements. The unique interplay between the courtyard and the museum galleries offers visitors a fresh view of the courtyard from almost every room, inviting connections between art and landscape.

Isabella Gardner was an avid gardener, and created theme gardens -- an Italian garden and a Japanese garden -- at her summer house in Brookline, Massachusetts. She also shared her love of growing things with fellow Bostonians, filling the large bay window of her Beacon Street townhouse with changing plant displays and establishing an urban window box contest. Today her legacy continues as the lush central courtyard is regularly transformed with new plants and colors in nine dramatic seasonal displays, including the beloved Hanging Nasturtiums display each April.

Rooted in the museum’s rich landscape tradition, the Gardner’s Landscape Visions lectures focus on a common theme each season, offering challenging, engaging explorations of ideas in landscape by noted speakers. Additional educational offerings -- including Ask the Gardener hours and special landscape tours for garden clubs -- provide further opportunities to explore the changing courtyard displays and the art of landscape design and history at the Gardner.