Art of the Garden

Into the garden and beyond…

Museum founder Margaret Woodbury Strong was an award-winning flower arranger and she loved spending time in the garden of the Rochester home she named Tuckaway Farm. She was also a patron of the arts, taking a keen interest in the work of the emerging artists of her time and acquiring artwork that especially caught her fancy. 

Nature Play—Art of the Garden is a tribute to each of these interests.   More than a dozen flower- and garden-oriented paintings by noted artists such as Abbott Fuller Graves, Emma Lambert Cooper, and Clifford Ulp, are on display among photographs of Margaret Strong at "play” in her own garden, and artifacts related to gardening and the natural environment. 

Nature Play illustrates, literally and figuratively, how artistic expression including painting, gardening, and flower arranging, as well as communing with nature are all important forms of play. 

Produced by Strong National Museum of Play