by Heidi Gómez ·
Friday, April 11, 2025
The famous nasturtiums cascade from the third-floor galleries to the courtyard garden below, up to 20 feet in length. (Photos by Heidi Gómez)
For about three weeks each spring, visitors to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston are treated to the Hanging Nasturtiums display in the museum’s courtyard garden, known as The Courtyard. It is an annual tradition celebrating the beginning of spring and Isabella Stewart Gardner’s birthday. This year, the flowering display was installed on March 26 and is anticipated to remain on view until April 14.
It was a wet and dreary Sunday when I went to the Gardner. But there was nothing bleak when I entered this Venetian palazzo that somehow fits into the city’s iconic Fenway neighborhood. The courtyard garden was, to use Gardner’s words, “deliriously glorious.” All around me were “oohs” and “aahs” and selfies taken against the background of cascading sunset orange blooms flowing from the third floor balconies.
Creating the display is no easy task. In a telephone interview, Director of Horticulture Erika Rumbley described how the process always starts in June. The plants are grown from seedlings in off-site greenhouses. Over nine months, they are successively potted into larger pots, and then trained to climb the walls and ceiling of the greenhouse. The horticulture team must then find a day in late March when temperatures are above freezing for several hours to safely take the plants outdoors from greenhouse to truck to museum.
Installation on “nasturtium day” is an elaborate ritual, said Rumbley. Each potted vine can reach a length of 20 feet and weigh about 50 pounds. Five or six people are needed to carry each container. In addition to the seven horticulturalists on staff, two additional contractors and 12 volunteers helped this year. The nasturtiums were individually detached from the greenhouse ceilings by people on three different ladders descending in unison while holding the delicate vine. At the museum, each vine was then carried up the stairs and through the galleries before they were draped over the balconies. This was done 18 times for each of the 18 hanging vines in the courtyard.
The annual tradition of hanging nasturtiums began with Gardner herself in 1904. Rumbley noted that “Isabella saw horticulture as an art among other arts … to be experienced alongside the textiles and the paintings and the music that was brought into the space.” When she bequeathed the museum to the city of Boston, Gardner stipulated that nothing could be added, sold, or changed from her original collection. However, this stipulation was only for the art in the galleries and not the living collections in the courtyard. These displays change depending on what the gardening team grows and what plants are doing particularly well. This constant rotation allows for something surprising and new when people visit.
The nasturtium theme was carried through other parts of the museum, as well. There are two paintings of nasturtiums, one specifically made of Gardner’s display by her friend and artist, Arthur Pope. Unfortunately, the room where it hangs was closed to the public that day so I did not see it. The gift shop sells items like note cards depicting nasturtiums, nasturtium seeds, and nasturtium syrup. Because they are edible plants, Cafe G had three nasturtium-themed offerings. The cava sparkler was delightfully effervescent.
There are only a few days left for the Hanging Nasturtiums this year. But the Gardner offers us the chance to see a garden in bloom every month with its 10 courtyard displays a year. The Spring Blooms display is scheduled for April 16, with delphiniums and foxgloves as the main stars. Rumbley said that it will be a saturated pink, delicate blue and white display–bright and cheery colors for the season.