A Beatle amid the bromeliads: Selby Gardens highlights George Harrison’s love of gardening
George Harrison is best known as one of The Beatles and for his solo recording career, but Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is celebrating his love of gardening in its next exhibition series program.
“George Harrison: A Gardener’s Life” will be on display Feb. 9-June 29 at Selby Gardens’ downtown Sarasota campus as the ninth edition of its Jean and Alfred Goldstein Exhibition Series. It highlights artists and their connection to nature, usually with artworks that inspire special horticultural displays tied to that artist.
The Harrison show follows past exhibitions that featured Andy Warhol, Paul Gauguin, Roy Lichtenstein, Salvador Dali, as well as fellow musician and songwriter Patti Smith and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
Selby, which was recently named to Time magazine’s list of 100 of the World’s Greatest Places for 2024, has drawn large crowds to its annual winter-spring exhibitions, which most recently featured a show highlighting the connection between Georgia O’Keefe and Yayoi Kusama.
In announcing the show, Selby said that shortly after The Beatles disbanded in 1970, Harrison bought the estate of Friar Park in Henley-on-Thames in the county of Oxfordshire in England. The estate had fallen into disrepair, and Harrison and his wife, Olivia, spent time revitalizing the 32 acres, inspiring the musician's love of gardening.
He dedicated his 1980 autobiography “I Me Mine” to “gardeners everywhere.”
Harrison, who died at age 58 in 2001, was known for such songs as “Here Comes the Sun,” “Something,” “My Sweet Lord,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Something,” and many others.
Harrison’s sister, Louise, lived in the Sarasota area before her death in 2023.
Unlike past exhibition series programs that featured original paintings, prints or photographs of plant life, “A Gardener’s Life” will include objects and ephemera from Harrison’s career and gardening. Those materials will be used to inspire Selby’s horticultural staff to create plant and flower displays in the Tropical Conservatory and around the campus.
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In the Museum of Botany and the Arts, the displays will include a selection of his music and lyrics, as well as excerpts from “Came the Lightening,” a book of poems by Olivia Harrison, which she dedicated to George. Selby has been working with Olivia Harrison on the exhibition.
In an announcement, Selby said Harrison’s “free approach to gardening combined creativity, spontaneity, whimsy, humor and joy.”
Several special programs will be announced later, but one of them will be “An Evening with Patti Smith Dedicated to George Harrison” on Feb. 12. Smith, whose own work was featured two years ago, is now an artist in residence at Selby. For more information go to selby.org.
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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Beatle George Harrison focus of Sarasota's Selby Gardens exhibition
