March 29, 2024 by Robin Plaskoff Horton
Photo: Jenny Pore. Courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.
For about three weeks every year, cascades of brilliant orange nasturtiums spill down from the Venetian balconies in the courtyard at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Photo: Jenny Pore. Courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.
A tradition started by Mrs. Gardner during the week before Easter to celebrate her birthday and the arrival of spring, the Hanging Nasturtiums display will run through April 14.
Photo: Jenny Pore. Courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.
The vertical garden display may be brief, but throughout the year, the horticulture team devotes months to nurturing the edible, pest-fighting, pollinator-attracting nasturtium vines (Tropaeolum majus) in the museum’s nursery.
The six-acre site includes heated greenhouses, cold frames, and outdoor growing space.
Photo courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.
Inside more than 10,000 square feet of climate-controlled space under glass, the team starts the nasturtiums from seed in June, plants them in late summer, and trains them throughout the winter to prepare them for their vibrant spring debut. The vines require continuous care in the greenhouse to ensure their cascading length of up to twenty feet, then require up to ten workers to install in the museum courtyard.
Left: Arthur Pope, Nasturtiums at Fenway Court, 1919. Right: Nasturtiums hanging in the window, 2017. Courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.
For over a hundred years, the nasturtium display has inspired artists and visitors to the museum. After a spring visit to the museum in 1913, Frances Brinley Wharton wrote to Mrs. Gardner:
“I had such a vivid delight and wonder—and through [sic] it was but the merest glimpses—I have carried away beautiful visions of remembrance …the golden charm of the young Rembrandt and that sombre Zubaran [sic] with the scarlet nasturtiums at his feet—and best of all perhaps the magical courtyard—with its long walls—[dropping] waters & masses of gorgeous sweet-scented bloom—The color, and splendor and magnificence of this whole place.”
Unless otherwise noted, photos by Siena Scarff. Courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.
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