The British Museum Is Recreating the Bayeux Tapestry’s Medieval Woodland

The British Museum is installing a temporary woodland installation called "Tapestry of Trees" in its forecourt from May 16 to June 2, evoking the 11th-century English landscape depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. Designed by garden designer Andy Sturgeon, the installation features 37 silver birch trees and planters with dyed hessian wraps matching the tapestry's colors, alongside woodland species like Guelder Rose and Foxglove. It launches public programming ahead of the tapestry's historic loan from France, which will be displayed in a blockbuster exhibition on the Norman Conquest starting in September.

« Le jardin anglais incarne une vision de la société » : une expo à Versailles explore cette passion de l’Europe des Lumières

The article explores an exhibition at the Grand Trianon in Versailles dedicated to the English garden, a style that emerged in 18th-century Europe as a deliberate contrast to the rigid symmetry of the formal French garden. Curator Élisabeth Maisonnier and museum director Laurent Salomé explain how these gardens, with their winding paths, irregular flowerbeds, and surprise features like grottoes and pagodas, were carefully constructed to imitate and amplify nature's complexity, drawing on influences from antiquity, the Middle Ages, and China.

An Installation at the British Museum Recreates the Bayeux Tapestry’s Landscape

The British Museum will present "Tapestry of Trees," an outdoor installation by garden designer Andy Sturgeon, ahead of its historic exhibition of the Bayeux Tapestry. The installation, on view from May 16 to June 2, 2026, recreates a medieval woodland using plants native to East Sussex, including silver birch, hazel, hawthorn, and field maples, evoking the landscape of the Battle of Hastings depicted in the tapestry. Dyed hessian wrapping on planters and root balls echoes the colors and textures of the embroidery.

The gardens are beautiful but we have stopped designing them. Analysis by architect Gabriele Mulè

I giardini sono bellissimi ma abbiamo smesso di progettarli. L’analisi dell’architetto Gabriele Mulè

Architect Gabriele Mulè analyzes the garden of Bruce Ginsberg in Hampshire, England, describing it as a masterful blend of Eastern and Western traditions. The garden, cultivated for over thirty years, features fluid curves, geometric hedges, a Tibetan stupa, and a labyrinth, embodying the concept of sharawadgi—planting without apparent order—while integrating elements from ancient Greece, the Renaissance, and Buddhist philosophy.