The Art Garden is a philanthropic partnership with perfumer Jo Malone London and has been designed with waves of texture, colour and scent, which reveal themselves throughout the seasons. The planting scheme includes some of Jo Malone London’s most-loved ingredients including peonies, bluebells, sage and geranium, to create a richly scented sanctuary.

The garden will be a key space for outdoor events and horticultural activities such as the GROW project that promotes the benefits of engaging in horticultural activities to improve the mental wellbeing.

“The University of Manchester’s Whitworth is very excited to embark upon this new partnership with Jo Malone London and Sarah Price to create the Art Garden, a beautiful and therapeutic space for all our visitors to enjoy, and to develop GROW; the Whitworth’s horticultural wellbeing  programme with mental health partners, charities and organisations,” said director, Maria Balshaw. “We are delighted to become one of Jo Malone London’s supported philanthropic projects and look forward to creating a very special garden in which art, plants and wellbeing coexist.”

The Art Garden will be cultivated and cared for through the sale of a Jo Malone London Charity Candle and with the support of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation the GROW project will continue to provide beneficiaries with the opportunity to work with professional horticulturalists to help create and maintain the Art Garden, alongside an art gardener volunteer team and volunteers from Jo Malone London.

“The Art Garden feels like a real meeting place; a few years ago there was nothing but a high wall that had its back to the park,” said Sarah Price. “Now it’s the complete opposite. The new extension has turned the gallery around so it looks out onto the park. It’s fantastic that Jo Malone London is committed in helping us develop this unique place, which now has a dynamic energy; it really is a meeting point beneath the trees; it’s a place to pause and linger.”

The opening of the Art Garden coincides with the recent unveiling of a sculpture in the Whitworth Park by turner prize nominee Anya Gallaccio. Her sculpture reimagines in steel a London Plane tree that had died of natural causes and was removed during the £15m redevelopment of the Whitworth last year.

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