V&A Dundee presents Garden Futures: Designing with Nature, a multi-environment exhibition inspired by different types of gardens, featuring warm and vibrant colours, dappled lighting, soundscapes and a scent trail

This post was written in partnership with V&A Dundee

Garden Futures: Designing with Nature is a sensory show that digs deep into the transformative beauty and physical power of garden design. Using examples of groundbreaking gardens by visionaries including Piet Oudolf, Mien Ruys, Derek Jarman and Eden Project Scotland, the exhibition considers the garden as much more than a place to retreat. This presentation of over 400 objects puts it in the context of an outdoor laboratory, where ideas for a more sustainable future can be tried and tested.

Garden Futures: Designing with Nature reflects 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.

Boeri Studio’s towering Bosco Verticale in Milan will spark your curiosity. Andrew Buurman’s endearing photo study on the Uplands Allotments will make you smile. Creative studio Biome Collective’s musical game will open your eyes to the beauty of planet-conscious gaming. The Garden Carpet Tapestry by Farshid Moussavi and Dovecot Studios will trigger your desire to create. British war correspondent and photojournalist Lalage Snow’s photographs documented in the book War Gardens (2018) highlight how individuals in conflict areas cultivate gardens as acts of hope – and it might just bring a tear to your eye.

The varied environments at Garden Futures

Garden Futures is separated into various environments that were designed by MSOMA Architects and follow a clear narrative. A scent trail of rose, jasmine and narcissus leads you through the areas, each separated by archways and beautiful objects. There are delightful interactive elements throughout, like scent boxes and games that let you transform dying worlds by seeding and nurturing musical gardens full of life, sound and joy.

The World as a Garden area encourages guests to consider what life would be like if we treated the entire world as a garden; as a paradise; or a sanctuary. Each project calls for industrialised societies to radically reassess their relationship with the planet and its environments. It is here that artists, designers, growers, makers and researchers look at the garden as a solution to climate change and consumerism.

The Garden Politics environment looks at garden ideals and how this is impacted by the tastes of the world’s most powerful people, and poses the the question: whose interests and values are truly cultivated in these spaces? It’s true that many flowerbeds have deep roots in colonialism and commerce. Here, you will see gardening in the age of nineteenth-century industrialisation, colonial expansion and scientific development.

Gardening in Times of Crisis explores the ways that gardens and gardening have offered a means of survival, refuge and defiance in times of crisis and displacement. They represent stability and routine when the world feels out of control.

Must-see exhibits for interior design lovers

William Morris’s Trellis wallpaper Morris and other likeminded artists, like Scottish architect and designer Robert Lorimer, brought garden imagery into the home with patterned wallpaper, furniture, ceramics and textiles. In this exhibit, you see their comittment to improving living conditions and promoting social reform inspired by Garden City principals developed by English urban planner Ebeneezr Howard, which aimed to create self-sufficient communities in harmony with nature.

Charles and Maggie Jencks Sun Chair from the 1980s, alongside a photo of their post-modern London home, The Cosmic House.

Dovecot Studios’ Garden Carpet Tapestry by Iranian-born and Dundee-trained architect Farshid Moussavi. The design was made especially for the exhibition and imagines a paradise populated by Scottish plants and wildlife that are at risk, including bats, bogbean and red squirrels.

The Clinker Bench by Scottish craftsman Angus Ross is made from stream-bent oak, celebrating the knots, colour variations and grain that make every piece of wood unique. This is displayed next to Meadow, a large-scale hand-tuffed textile work by Alexandra Kehayoglou, in which visitors are invited to kick-off their shoes and walk across the wool grass and flowers.

Self-watering plant pots by Scottish designers POTR are made from recycled plastic either destined for landfill or collected from UK beaches. The origami-inspired design means they can be shipped using carbon-saving flat packed delivery without plastic packaging and at the end of their life the pots can be fully recycled.

Visiting Garden Futures: Designing with Nature at V&A Dundee

There is beauty in every corner of Garden Futures: Designing with Nature, and the only way to truly understand its impact is by experiencing it yourself. Book online in advance to save £1 on your ticket until 25th January 2026. Tickets start at £7.50 while members and kids go free.

Garden Futures at V&A Dundee

1 Riverside Esplanade

Dundee

DD1 4EZ

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