Garden Futures: Designing with Nature at V&A Dundee

The Woven Floral Wall, Garden Futures at V&A Dundee ©Grant Anderson

The V&A Dundee’s latest major exhibition for 2025, Garden Futures: Designing with Nature celebrates the role that gardens play in all of our lives while exploring every element of what a garden can be: paradise, sanctuary, retreat, labour of love, functional, beautiful, small or large, private or shared, as well as delving into how garden design impacts us all in useful and joyful ways, from providing food through kitchen gardens and the resurgent allotment movement, to inspiring beautiful designs and artworks ranging from William Morris to contemporary videogames. Garden Futures: Designing with Nature digs up surprising stories of gardens through time, including creating sanctuaries and empowering communities and individuals to find peace and hope in times of adversity.

This sumptuous, colour-filled exhibition takes you on an illuminating journey through key moments of inspiration and innovation in gardens and garden design, from the 20th century to the present day, and looking to the future of gardens.

See the broad style and variety of gardens across the globe – from a window box to a vast estate – celebrating and exploring every element of what a garden can be. It takes visitors on a journey from Persian garden paradises to the sustainable Oban Seaweed Gardens, from huge vertical gardens in Milan flourishing in giant concrete apartment blocks to a videogame-inspired garden in China.

Highlighting examples of groundbreaking gardens by visionaries including Iconic garden designer Piet Oudolf's simple but artistic garden design's give an insight into his distinctive naturalistic planting style, while the landscape at Maggie’s Dundee, created by Arabella Lennox-Boyd, demonstrates how healing through nature in a peaceful and reflective garden can be an integral part of a cancer care centre through to the latest, Eden Project Scotland. Garden Futures considers the garden as much more than a place to retreat, but an outdoor laboratory revealing ideas and insights into the power of gardens and how our outdoor spaces can be part of a more greener sustainable, joyful future that can be tried and tested.

A fascinating collection of more than 400 objects including paintings, textiles, sculpture, interior design, fashion, drawings, and photographs showing how the enduring allure of gardens influences artists, writers, and designers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Duncan Grant, and William Morris.

Get hands-on with Garden by Dundee-based creative studio Biome Collective, a videogame that allows players to create a virtual musical garden, and the Pollinator Pathway digital tool that creates a planting design tailored for the maximum benefit of pollinating insects. 

Immerse yourself in the garden scent trail, with fragrances of rose, jasmine, and narcissus as well as gazing at the woven wall of floral beauty. There is something for everyone (gardeners and non-gardeners alike) at this UK exclusive at V&A Dundee which runs until 25 January 2026.

Visit the website: Garden Futures: Designing with Nature