- March 20, 2025
-
-
Loading
Loading
If you grew up in the Sixties, you'll know that each member of the Beatles had a persona. Paul was the cute Beatle, John was brainy, Ringo was fun and George was quiet and then later on, mystical. Well, it turns out that George was also the gardening Beatle.
Who knew? People on the other side of the pond do because they are familiar with Friar Park, the Victorian estate restored by Harrison and his wife Olivia in Henley-on-Thames, England. But thanks to Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, we Yanks can also learn about George's gardening prowess and how it helped him cultivate a sense of peacefulness — without taking a plane across the Atlantic.
It's the fashion among museums and other cultural institutions (Selby considers itself a "living" museum) to mount ambitious shows with boldface names to get audiences knocking down the gates.
In a world filled with fickle patrons and uncertain government funding, the name of the game is generating the low-level anxiety that has been dubbed "FOMO" (Fear Of Missing Out).
Some of these splashy endeavors land with a bellyflop or worse yet, are greeted with a yawn.
"George Harrison: A Gardener's Life" avoids the pitfalls of a tenuous connection, crass commercialism or dissonance. It's enchanting, sublime and spiritual, as nature is itself.
First and foremost, this achievement is due to the participation of Harrison's widow, Olivia, a record industry producer whom he married in 1978 shortly before the birth of their son, Dhani. She became a true life partner for George and since his death, the conservator of his legacy.
Under the stewardship of Selby President and CEO Jennifer Rominiecki and Chief Curator David Berry, an Oxford PhD who is veteran of The Ringling, Selby has created an astonishing living memorial to George (all Beatles are forever known by their first name) that whispers but never shouts.
What makes the Selby Gardens tribute to George even more stunning is that it was put together by the living museum's team of 80 employees and 800 volunteers in the wake of last year's hurricanes and not long after 2 million twinkling lights were taken down from its holiday "Lights in Bloom" exhibition.
"George Harrison: A Gardener's Life" is the ninth installment of the annual Jean and Alfred Goldstein Exhibition Series. Last year's show focused on the relationship between the artists Yayoi Kusama and Georgia O'Keefe while the 2023 exhibition was a tribute to stained glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany.
With the Goldstein series, Selby looks at "major artists through the lens of their connection to nature in our botanical garden setting. Along the way, we've really tried to find surprising connections," Rominiecki says.
Walking around the 15-acre sanctuary on the Sarasota bayfront where gardens and botanical displays have been erected to mirror those in Friar Park, you can't help feeling Harrison would approve of this living tribute. After all, he dedicated his 1980 memoir, "I, Me, Mine" to "gardeners everywhere."
Upon entering Selby Gardens through its new visitors center, guests are met by whimsical topiary trees reminiscent of those found at Friar Park.
It doesn't seem forced or corny to see a collection of white guitars suspended above "Ye (Gently) Weeping Garden" or to be surrounded by the strains of Ravi Shankar's sitar in the colorful "Ye Kolam Garden." George first met Shankar in 1966 and shortly after began studying music with him, despite being in the throes of full-scale Beatlemania.
In fact, it feels profound to hear Harrison's music as you stroll through Selby's "horticultural vignettes," as they are called by the living museum, that play off references to George's life.
"I really want to see you, Lord. I really want to be with you," Harrison sang in "My Sweet Lord." Unfortunately, he got his wish too soon — he was just 58 when he left our Earthly plane. But you don't have to be a follower of Emerson or Thoreau to understand that George was with God in his garden and that we too can commune with the divine in Selby Gardens.
A giant horizontal photograph of George hangs over Selby's koi pond and is reflected in the water below. He seems right at home with the zen vibe of the place.
Throughout the exhibition, you can find signs with lyrics from songs written by George and from poems written by Olivia Harrison published in her 2022 book, "Came the Lightening."
There's a silhouette of a giant hand inspired by the cover of George's 1973 album, "Living in the Material World," in the Tropical Conservatory that has a hollowed-out interior filled with plants. You'll find it in "Ye Palm Garden" (pun intended).
For those who need a history lesson on Beatlemania, the Selby House Cafe, the home that founder Marie Selby and her husband Bill built in the 1920s, has a collection of Fab Four memorabilia.
The displays in the Museum of Botany & the Arts are devoted to the transformation of Friar Park, a rundown, 120-room Victorian mansion that Harrison acquired from nuns after the Beatles dissolved. The front of the museum has been wrapped with a photograph so that it appears to be a greenhouse with an imposing figure of George.
Harrison was just 27 when he bought Friar Park, but "his nerves were shot" from his years of being a Beatle, Olivia Harrison said during a Feb. 11 luncheon at Selby Gardens. The estate was a place where he could heal, she said.
During the luncheon conversation, Financial Times gardening columnist and British historian Robin Lane Fox asked Olivia why George was drawn to gardening. Why would a man who had grown up in a modest brick house in Liverpool, a gritty industrial city, care about plants?
Olivia Harrison told the sold-out event that Friar Park took her late husband back to the days when he could escape from the hustle and bustle of the city in the Victorian-era Calderstones Park, which was near his school.
Restoring the Neo-Gothic house and gardens on the 62-acre estate built by lawyer Sir Frank Crisp was a massive undertaking, particularly since it included an Alpine rock garden with a scale model of the Matterhorn. Fortunately, George had the resources to finance the restoration of Friar Park, where he was joined by Olivia, who supported him in his quest.
Believe it or not, Selby Gardens has created a tribute to the Alpine Garden as part of its exhibition, but on a smaller scale.
One of the most fascinating revelations of the talk between Fox and Olivia Harrison was that she began writing poems after suffering a bout of amnesia due to a neurological condition. It was the first time in her wide-ranging career, which has included music and film producing and philanthropy, that she had taken up poetry.
The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Olivia Harrison was born Olivia Arias in Los Angeles in 1948. She met her future husband while working at A&M Records and later helped him found his own record label, Dark Horse.
Among Olivia's film projects are a production of "Concert for George," which won a Grammy in 2005, and her co-production of Martin Scorsese's 2011 documentary about her husband. Harrison was a film producer himself through HandMade Films, the production company he formed with partner Denis O'Brien to finance "Monty Python's Life of Brian" that also made other films.
Olivia Harrison may not be quite the gardening enthusiast that her spouse was, but she has taken up the shovel in her husband's memory. In 2008, she teamed up with Yvonne Innes to design a garden honoring George for the Chelsea Flower Show in London.
There is a short film streaming inside Selby's Museum of Botany & the Arts about their collaboration on the pop-up garden, which included four sections representing different parts of George's life.
Most of the 20 poems that Olivia wrote for George in her book, "Come the Lightening," focus on grief, loss and the realization that each season, even each day, is precious when shared with a loved one who may not have much time left.
Olivia wrote "Another Spring" a month after George died from lung cancer in November 2001. "All I wanted was another spring," wrote the bereft widow. "Was it too much to ask?"
Walking through the hedge maze for "Losing Ye Bodies" inspired by Friar Park and other horticultural installations filled with George's music and memorabilia, one might think Olivia Harrison orchestrated a spring in Sarasota to replace the one she never got.
