Guest-curated by James Horner, Head Gardener at Benton End, the Garden to Canvas: Cedric Morris and Benton End exhibition brings together the works that played a key role in the revival of Morris’s historic Suffolk garden.
The sixteenth-century house, Benton End near Hadleigh, was the home of Morris and his lifelong partner Arthur Lett-Haines (1894–1978). From this remarkable location, the pair ran the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing – a place where art, horticulture, and community thrived side by side. With its free-flowing spirit, open-minded ethos Benton End became a haven for creative freedom. Many artists, including a young Lucian Freud, acknowledged that it was here where their true artistic identities first took root.
Following Morris’ death in 1982, the house and garden fell into neglect. In 2021, Benton End was gifted to the Garden Museum by Rob and Bridget Pinchbeck, who bought Benton End in 2018 from a private owner. The garden is currently being restored through the vision and skill of James Horner, funded by a charitable trust. Fortuitously, the garden was never dug up and many rare bulbs were discovered ‘sleeping’ under the grass. Sarah Cook, who lives in the next village, has tracked down 28 of the varieties named and registered by Cedric, each showing how his artist’s eye as ‘one of the great colourists of the century’ (Philip Mould). Thanks to her incredible work, his famous irises will flower once again at Benton End.
By means of a remarkable collaboration between art and horticulture, Horner and his team are guided in the restoration by the gardens’ living documents and Morris’ original paintings, where flowers and planting schemes have now been reintroduced – more than half a century since Morris first stepped foot on Benton End soil. The revived Benton End aims to support and inspire artists and gardeners of all ages and to encourage freedom of invention, enthusiasm, and enjoyment, in the spirit of the original ethos of Morris and Haines. Benton End’s gardens will reopen to the public in May 2026.
Featuring Morris’ flower paintings, admired for their bold compositions, vitality and botanical precision, the Garden to Canvas exhibition runs until the 18th of June, 2025, at the Philip Mould & Company gallery on London’s Pall Mall.
