Public Practice Research Project
Growing Together: Dame Sylvia Crowe Garden
Initiated in partnership with the Design Age Institute in 2021, Growing Together explores design and horticulture as catalysts for positive social change and nurtures community connections in response to the planetary emergency.
GROWING TOGETHER engages local residents to share stewardship of the Dame Sylvia Crowe garden at the Design Museum. The garden was named in memory of the pioneering landscape architect who designed the landscaping for the Commonwealth Institute in 1962.
The project provides an inclusive learning and research space, raises awareness of sustainable design and horticulture practices, and facilitates collective action committed to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Biodiversity Action Plan 2022 – 2027, which you can download via the link below.
Illustration by Georgia Cottingham, 2021
The Project’s Story
The Growing Together project aims to reduce inequalities in access to creative learning at the intersection of design and nature. It connects creatives, designers, gardeners and makers to support design thinking, knowledge exchange and new social contracts.
It’s story starts in 2021:
From June 2021 to January 2022, designer Georgia Cottingham led consultations with older adults (50+) from four community groups not engaged with the museum: The Dalgarno Trust, Open Age, Kensington and Chelsea over 50s Forum, and The Octavia Foundation. Their ideas for a Design Museum green space shaped the project vision and design brief.
In March 2022, horticultural educator George Hudson and design studio public works were appointed to co-design an accessible garden reflecting the museum’s ecological agenda. They ran workshops with local residents aged 50+ with limited access to green space, and with Hammersmith Academy students. Participants made cyanotypes, sowed seeds, planted bulbs, propagated plants, tested natural dyes, and explored biodiversity, habitats and stewardship, gaining skills and contributing ideas.
In October 2022, fifteen older adults formed a volunteer cohort to share stewardship of the garden, supported by ecologist and author Michael Holland.
In February 2023, social enterprise Renew:EL installed steps and a handrail to make the upper level accessible and helped plant the lower embankments.
In March 2023, public works installed upper-level planters designed to absorb museum waste, including storage units that unfold into seating and work surfaces.
Through 2024, the garden was the catalyst for several learning events, testing it as a site for creative learning.
In 2025, the garden launched its first display, Dwellings, Rehomed an exhibition showcasing designer birdhouses; the garden also became the home of a pilot residency programme with 3 self-funded projects by multidisciplinary practitioners; an MA student-led initiative, The Nest, was launched in the garden to support people with dementia facing barriers to connect with nature; additionally, the museum’s first garden workshop for schools Designing for Butterflies was launched.
The garden before Growing Together and early stages of transformation
Volunteers
The volunteer cohort have collectively developed the volunteer profile, and the Growing Together Manifesto, pledging to:
- make a harmonious, welcoming space.
- explore the challenges and opportunities of what a productive urban garden might be.
- garden for a changing climate with care and without chemical control.
- protect, enhance and improve biodiversity.
- share responsibility for matter which comes into the garden, considering where is has come from and how it has been produced.
- share responsibility for matter which leaves the garden, considering where is goes and what impact it will have.
Volunteers meet regularly to care for the Dame Sylvia Crowe Garden, and visit other green spaces across London. The volunteers' learning has been supported by visits hosted by:
Chelsea Physic Garden
Fulham Palace Gardens
Garden Museum
Hampton Court Palace Garden FestivaL
Holland Park Ecology Centre
Kew Gardens
Phoenix Gardens
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Kitchen Gardens
Camden Arts Centre
Barbican Conservatory
Hammersmith Garden
Horniman Gardens
Walworth Garden
OmVed Gardens
The Garden Museum
RHS Lindley Library
Kensington Palace
Peckham Gardens
Rooftop Gardens
Westminster Abby Garden
Natural History Museum Garden
Importantly, our volunteers host and support seasonal events that engage different audiences with horticulturalists, designers, thinkers and creatives to produce and share knowledge in the garden.
Volunteers at the Dame Sylvia Crowe
Garden Salons and Learning events
Throughout the year, the Growing Together project hosts events where visitors can enjoy inspiring talks and engage in workshops led by experts from the worlds of gardening, horticulture and design.
In these events, visitors can try their hand at horticultural and creative activities, swap gardening tips and tricks, connect, network and learn more about the garden’s development directly from our volunteers.
Previous speakers and facilitators include:
Susanna Grant
Hackney Herbal
Oliver Haden
Sue Stuart-Smith
Danny Hubbard
Sui Searle
Maymana Arefin
Marchelle Farrell
Claire Takacs
Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck
Renata Fernandez
Ashley Edwards
Errol Ruben Fernandes
Lola Lely
Studio Kuhu
Sara Kelly
Kalpana Arias
Computer Room
Flock Together
Christie Swallow
The Drag Queen Gardener
Garden Salons and Learning events
Dwellings, Rehomed
Visit our garden and explore a vibrant collection of birdhouses by some of London’s most innovative designers. Responding to the challenge of reimagining the humble birdhouse, the display brings together a feast of materials, shapes and concepts. Each creates a space for our feathered friends to live in, and for humans to reflect upon.
Seventeen birdhouses imagined and crafted by visionary designers are displayed in the garden, inviting you to immerse in nature and explore the space to find them all.
Dwellings, Rehomed is the progression of the Dwellings project, originally conceived by Computer Room and Flock Together in collaboration with Open AREA in 2024.
The display is free to visit, following the museum's opening hours.
Click below to find out more and plan your visit:
Visit Dwellings, Rehomed
Research
Throughout 2025, the garden became an experimental space piloting a research residency, formed by 3 self-funded projects from multidisciplinary practitioners.
The leads of each project established infrastructure for their projects in the garden with the support from the volunteer cohort and visited the space regularly to monitor and reflect on the progress of their research.
As part of their agreement with the museum, each of them facilitated workshops and activities in the garden to engage different audiences with the subject of their research, contributing to making the garden into an accessible living learning space.
Click below to find out more:
Research at The Dame Sylvia Crowe Garden
The Nest
Discover a new installation at the museum's garden – an inclusive, sensory-friendly structure nestled among the trees, designed for people with dementia and their carers. This is a project curated and produced by students from Kingston University.
On display at the museum's garden from 11 August 2025.
Click below to find out more:
The Nest: Find out more
Children and Families
In 2025, the museum piloted its first garden workshop for primary schools, titled “Designing for Butterflies”. Developed by architect and horticulturalist Niamh Anderson, the workshop helps children understand the butterfly cycle and reflect on how design can support it. The workshop will be soon added to the museum’s schools offer.
In addition, the garden hosts Family Playdays during the summer, in which families are welcome to enjoy a day of hands-on gardening, play and crafty activities celebrating more than human design.
Children and families at the Dame Sylvia Crowe
Entangled Stories
Entangled Stories is a digital resource that gathers the voices and experiences of several key participants involved in the Growing Together project from 2022 to 2024, including project volunteers, horticultural advisers, workshop facilitators and Design Museum staff.
Click below to explore:
Visit the resource
Acknowledgements
The project is enriched with insights and ideas from many contributors. We are grateful to each person who has challenged and expanded our thinking and practice – thanks for helping us to grow.
To the Growing Together project Critical Friends group – Noordeen Fahmy, Alice Laughton, Robert Halbert-Pereno and Pak Ling Wan for advising and supporting the project.
To contributors of the Growing Together project learning syllabus, including designer Isabel Leah, artist JC Candanedo, researcher Carly Dickson, and Design Museum Director Assistant Madeline Penn.
To partners Design Age Institute and Opportunity Kensington Business Improvement District, for your guidance and energy.
To this project's funders Lightbulb Trust and Kusama Trust for your generosity, conviction and patience.
About Dame Sylvia Crowe
Born in Oxfordshire, Dame Sylvia Crowe was an influential landscape architect, garden designer and author. One of the leading theorists and practitioners in her field, she promoted landscape architecture in the UK and internationally. She was president of the Landscape Institute from 1957 to 1959 and helped to found the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), of which she became acting president. Crowe designed the new grounds for the Commonwealth Institute in 1962.
Background image by Matthew Kaltenborn