READING GARDENS
by GINA DOVER-JAQUES
Content Release Timeline
- 2026 -
24 Sep - Advolly Inaugural Article Goes Live GMG
1. Make Advolly Blog Post LIVE on my website - DONE. Just need to publish the website, then check it works
2. Website HOMEPAGE, section 04, add link to Blog via the image & banner - DONE. Just need to publish the website, then check it works
3. Website HOMEPAGE, section 06, add the following text:
The inaugural Reading Gardens study, Reading Rousham with Advolly Richmond OBE, has been published in the Garden Media Guild Autumn Quarterly. The full study, including the complete photographic series and written reflections, is available to read here.
Read Reading Rousham →
DONE. Just need to publish the website, then check it works
I’m delighted to finally be able to share a little news with fellow GMG members. My new photographic research project, Reading Gardens, has just been launched. It is a long-term documentary series exploring how different forms of professional expertise shape the way gardens and other green spaces are experienced. The inaugural study, Reading Rousham, followed garden historian Advolly Richmond OBE at Rousham, observing how her knowledge and expertise influenced the way she moved through, looked at and engaged with the landscape. I’m particularly delighted that this first study features in the Autumn edition of the Garden Media Guild Quarterly, and very grateful to Dan for giving the work a two-page spread. Now that the Quarterly has been published, members can discover much more about Reading Gardens, including the full Reading Rousham study, on the project’s dedicated website. The site will continue to grow alongside the project as the work develops. I’ll share the link below for anyone who would like to explore it. It feels rather special to be beginning this journey within the GMG.
4. WhatsApp Announcement in the afternoon to GMG Members
5. Then below the above WhatsApp message to the GMG, add in another message below the website's link www.readinggardens.com
6. INSTAGRAM POST Announcement - do not place text over images in order to retain the project's subtly.
The body text to the right of the images:
Reading Gardens is now live.
I’m delighted to finally share the inaugural study from my new photographic research project, Reading Gardens.
Reading Rousham was created with garden historian Advolly Richmond OBE at Rousham Gardens, exploring how professional knowledge shapes the way a garden is experienced — what draws attention, where we pause, how we move, and what we notice.
Rather than directing or interviewing Advolly as we walked, I observed quietly as she moved through the garden in her own way. Reflection came afterwards, through written questions developed from moments I had observed and photographed.
I’m particularly delighted that Reading Rousham has been published today in the Garden Media Guild Autumn Quarterly Magazine.
The full study, including the extended writing, Advolly’s reflections and photographic series, is now published on Reading Gardens.
www. readinggardens.com
This is the beginning of a longer body of work exploring how different forms of horticultural expertise shape our experience of gardens and cultivated landscapes.
#ReadingGardens #GardenPhotography #GardenHistory #AnaloguePhotography #GardenMediaGuild
__________________
There is one sentence that I think is especially important: “This is the beginning of a longer body of work…” It prevents 24 September from feeling like the culmination of the Rousham article. It tells people that Reading Rousham is Study No. 1 and Reading Gardens is what is beginning.
For the Instagram post itself, I would lead with one of your strongest photographs of Advolly. I would not create a graphic saying “Published!” or show a screenshot of the magazine spread as the lead image. Let the photography announce the work.
Five GMG photographs on 24 September as a carousel post, with the above announcement in the post text area.
Slide 1: Photograph only. No typography. No logo. No announcement.
Slide 2: A very restrained text slide:
Reading Gardens
The inaugural study
Reading Rousham
with Advolly Richmond OBEPublished 24 September 2026
Then subsequent slides could introduce the GMG publication and perhaps one or two very short statements about the study, with the full caption beneath the carousel doing the heavier explanatory work.
There is something rather confident about not writing anything across that first photograph. Someone sees Advolly within Rousham, stops, swipes — and then discovers what has happened.
I think that feels much more like Reading Gardens.
“Understanding another person’s way of seeing can change our own.” is one of the strongest sentences I have developed for Reading Gardens, precisely because it reaches beyond describing the methodology and begins to articulate why the work matters. At the moment, however, the homepage is still doing an important job of establishing what Reading Gardens is. The inaugural study has not yet been publicly released, and most visitors have not had the opportunity to experience the work sufficiently to understand what that sentence means. At Beginning of October make a small evolution to the homepage and introduce the sentence as a quiet concluding thought, probably toward the lower part of the page, after the visitor has encountered the project, the method and Reading Rousham. That sequence matters: What is Reading Gardens? → How does it work? → See the work → Why might this matter, and then: Understanding another person’s way of seeing can change our own. By that point it won't read as a slogan. It will read as a conclusion the work has earned. Another reason for waiting ... what I have been discovering through the What the Work Is Teaching Me page is that Reading Gardens is beginning to reveal something deeper than I necessarily knew when I started it. I am observing one trained form of attention while exercising another trained form of attention myself. The sentence above is beginning to encapsulate that larger territory. Therefore resist turning it prematurely into homepage positioning until the 2nd-week of October. By then Reading Rousham will exist publicly, people will have begun encountering the project, and that sentence can quietly signal the next stage of Reading Gardens: not merely documenting how experts see, but asking what might happen to our own seeing when we encounter theirs. This is a much more powerful job for the sentence.
11 Oct
"Understanding another person's way of seeing can change our own"
Reading Gardens does not ask participants to explain gardens as they experience them. It first observes how expertise is expressed through attention, movement and engagement with place, before inviting reflection afterwards.