The curator herself points out, “Even though paintings were predominantly exhibited, I tried to pick pieces that were done using different techniques, such as collage, cyanotype, or sublimation printing.”

“To add more depth to the selection, I commissioned Aleksandra Orekhova to create a flower installation,” she shares. But we are not there just yet.

The story of this particular exhibition began years ago, when Margarita would visit her grandparents at their vacation home (dacha) and spend days watching them carefully tend their garden. These memories were all documented by Margarita’s grandpa, Vadim, an amateur photographer. As you stand in the middle of the gallery, looking at photos enclosed in a large glass cover, it brings a special kind of warmth to see the curator’s childhood on display, with a little title on the side proudly reading ‘Grandpa Vadim’.

Each piece we are about to see complements the others seamlessly. Still, they all retain the artists’ authentic voices. Some brought back memories of long-forgotten flowers; others awakened my inner child from her deep winter hibernation. Even the artworks done specifically for the exhibition did not seem forced into a pre-existing concept. This, in turn, demonstrates Margarita’s curatorial skill.

Walking through the exhibition feels like watching flowers grow in the artists’ minds, one after another. You walk, and you enter a new world; with each new corner, each new cluster of canvases, you see a new garden.

And so, we begin.

As we enter, our eyes fall on the A3 poster giving some background on the exhibition. We learn about Margarita’s grandparents and their garden. We read as the curator goes through the famed gardens of Walthamstow, all depicted in some form throughout the exhibition. As we look around, it all comes together. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Surrounding the poster are artworks from five different artists. Looking to the left, we start with photographs by Waltham’s long-time collaborator Arlau. Working mainly with analogue processes, Arlau presented three photographs, two of which showed beautiful flowers growing among green shrubs, created specifically for the exhibition.

Our eyes then fall to a series of prints by Aleksandra Orekhova, who also designed the poster for the exhibition itself. The prints are detailed, yet subtle. Looking more closely, you see the patterns of flower petals rendered abstractly. They almost tease you into looking closer and imagining what the corners of the prints would have looked like. As you turn around, you are met with the artist’s final contribution to the exhibition, a flower installation with mostly locally sourced materials.

Standing in the middle of the room, it acts as both an amalgamation of the exhibition’s focal theme and a reminder of the fleeting concept of flowers themselves. This installation will not last forever; it cannot be preserved, but that is the beauty of a garden itself. You tend to it, nurture it, but in the end, the only way it can be immortalised is through the eyes of the beholder, or in this case, through a three-day exhibition.

Our eyes return to the poster, and on the right side we see the works of Polya Plavinskaya. Three collages made up of textures and colours that, in a different context, might have felt foreign to each other. Yet through the magic of Polya’s vision, they come together, creating something that resembles more a garden of imagination, the kind made up of layers of your own experiences, left to revisit in the safety of your mind.

We naturally move on to the collages hanging next to Polya’s work. The title card says “The Tits”. Next to it, some beautiful collages by Yvonne Coughlan.

In the corner stands a table with colourful cut-outs, scissors, glue and anything else you might need to create a work of your own. This is a collaboration between Waltham and The Tits—a collage workshop where guests can stop by, sit and create. A small corner where, inspired by the vibrant colours on the walls, you can make that garden of imagination real.

Margarita tells me that putting these specific artists next to the workshop was deeply intentional. “Three collage artists (Polya Plavinskaya, Yvonne Coughlan, The Tits Collective) were placed in immediate proximity to the collage workshop station, so the audience could be inspired by the pieces done in the same technique.”

Turning back and walking along the same wall, we now face four works by Neha Nandedkar. Their brightness encapsulates us. The paintings seem abstract, resembling more an energetic field of a flower than a flower itself. The tones play with each other, daring the viewer to observe their dance.

We then see two works by Hyun Yoon. One is a large canvas; it overwhelms with emotion. In it, you see the sky, the earth, and the sea collide in a soft pattern. The other is smaller; it sneaks up on you quietly, but before you know it, you disappear in the shades of blue and green that blend, overtaking your sight.

The abstract works bring new meaning to the theme. A garden of the mind, an aura of the flower, or something completely different that, in collision, begins to bloom. It’s fascinating to see these artists side by side. A demonstration of how a subject can transcend style, colour and even culture, bringing the joys of the world together.

“Works by Neha Nandedkar and Hyun Yoon are more abstract, but still incredibly delicate; hence, they were paired,” Margarita says.

A few steps further, and we see the work of Sarah Dee Barrett. Three of her four paintings come from a collection in which the artist painted her own backyard in Hackney. Getting another personal interpretation of a garden is only part of what makes these canvases so captivating. They are grounded in reality, yet they take you away from yours. We walk into Sarah’s backyard; we are welcomed with open arms. Visions of domesticity.

“Because of the bold choice of colour to highlight either the sky or a watering can in Sarah’s quite realistic paintings and relatively large canvases, I allocated the rest of the wall to her.”

We pass a large window as it casts afternoon light over the peaceful world of Walthamstow, and see two very different works hung vertically, one atop the other. Both are by Mariana Lebedeva, who has mastered the art of peeking into the privacy of the mundane. The first canvas throws us in the middle of a dinner party in a cosy backyard. We see the view from the top, and lively chatter fills our ears as we watch the details of this joyful sight reveal themselves to us.

The second one puts us in the uncomfortable position of a quiet observer. A woman sits naked, looking out the window, surrounded by plants. It feels foreign to be there, watching her afternoon ritual, yet something about the way Mariana placed us as the viewers makes me think we are not intruding at all.

“Mariana depicts light incredibly well, giving dimly lit scenes a depth and atmosphere you would feel in real life,” Margarita shares.

A moment of silent contemplation, and perhaps a look out the window to cleanse our palate, and we are faced with a rippled ceramic vase filled with flowers. On top, a painting of a vase filled with flowers. Same vase, same artist: Tania Warren Fuentes.

The subject and the artwork appearing side by side create a full-circle moment, but the artist’s choice to depict a vase also makes me think of it as a private garden, the kind we put together ourselves, to brighten our home for a couple of days.

A wave of colour hits us as we move our gaze to the work of Millicent Evans. Canvases with trees, plants and water. Her smaller artworks make you feel completely at peace. A large canvas with a blend of red and yellow brings heat to the mind. An unexpected feeling in a room filled with soft petals catches you off guard immediately.

On these works, Margarita comments, “Millicent Evans created an almost entirely new realm, depicting landscapes but with a combination of thin and soft strokes and sometimes unusual colours which makes them magical to look at.”

Our journey continues as we now face a completely new interpretation of a garden. Timothy Yufit presents us with a digital archive of former London churchyards mapped out on a small piece of paper. We have a bird’s-eye view of the past.

Right next to it, Catherine Nightingale, architecture student and multidisciplinary creative, used tracing paper to sketch maps of real gardens around East London. With her work, we go a layer beneath the gardens previously depicted throughout the exhibition and see the subject’s armature.

Pairing artists who work with different types of mapping and giving viewers a fresh perspective was a nice way to shake up the journey through Walthamstow.

“While Timothy created a digital map of London’s churchyards, documenting them in the form of postage stamps, Catherine’s maps of green spaces in North-East London on tracing paper showed a delicately depicted aerial viewpoint.”

The curator shakes things up again, taking us into Loulou Elliott’s work, which looks adorably peaceful at first glance. After deeper inspection, you can see the lonely complexity of what’s underneath. It becomes especially apparent in the painting depicting the roots of a tree growing far beyond the ground, showing us how much of life often remains unseen.

The pastel colours that dominate Loulou’s canvases deepen in sunlight. Margarita told me she “wanted to place her pieces in the area with the most light coming in to complement this.”

We turn our heads to see objects placed on a table, enclosed in a glass frame. Those same photographs by Grandpa Vadim are displayed as traces of inspiration through time. We also get a look at some dry clay pieces by Loulou Elloitt, ceramics by Tania Warren Fuentes, and dry clay pieces & little canvases by Yana Lodovskiy, an artist we are to meet soon.

“All of these objects have more dimension to them (except the photographs) and are smaller and more fragile, so it was a natural choice to exhibit them behind glass.”

We turn back, and there it is: a fox curiously looking back at us. Yana Lordovskiy’s work is deeply inspired by folklore. This particular piece feels like it was taken straight out of a page of a fairy-tale book. An illustration of a fictional garden where a watchful fox walks through dimensional patterns.

We return to the wonderful reality through Angus Forbes-Cable’s landscape paintings. Two of the artworks, created specifically for the exhibition, depict scenes from St James’s Park that feel like they were taken straight out of a medieval fantasy film. The last work, made with watercolour, is playfully quiet. The green trees and bushes twirl between each other, whispering mischievous secrets.

We walk farther to see two more paintings created specifically for “Walthamstow in Bloom”. The artist, Kirsten Schmidt, normally specialises in line art. Two of her more traditional paintings were also on display, with their dark, sharp lines creating soft natural silhouettes. This juxtaposition made the two still-life canvases with bright flowers stand out in a special way.

Almost at the end, we continue on to some beautiful prints. First, we see two works by Pam Newall. Her use of cyanotype printmaking created an X-ray-like view of growing flowers. Soon after, we see four prints by Hilary Blackburn. Her use of the sublimation printing technique layered flowers and brushes atop one another. Our eyes linger as we begin to study the puzzle of her work.

On these works, Margarita comments, “Pam Newall displayed what is perhaps the perfect technique for botanical prints.” Hilary Blackburn’s prints, she continues, “resembled the fallen foliage ‘rugs’ in Autumn.”

Finally, we come to the middle of the room, where an actual greenhouse filled with paintings and plants awaits. Caroline Joynson filled the small space with canvases depicting various houseplants she has created still lifes of. She complemented this warm installation with some of her own houseplants, borrowed for the exhibition.

“The greenhouse allowed me to exhibit works in a more unconventional way and to create an extra space within the gallery,” the curator shares.

The greenhouse stands out immediately as you enter the gallery; you are automatically drawn to a muddied vision of Caroline’s work. Yet it is after walking through the room that the experience feels the most rewarding.

After a trip through prints, photographs, ceramics, blooming dreamscapes and mysterious landscapes. After you feel through all the meanings a garden can take when it’s mixed in the ether of the mind with memories and fantasies, you walk into the small tent, enter the unknown and take a moment to ponder as the plants breathe around you.

“I think of a garden now as a place of personal reflection and connection with friends. When invigilating the show, I got to speak to many visitors, and it was so rewarding to hear that many found their garden type represented in the show and shared their memories of their own favourite place,” Margarita reflects.