New Garden Museum takes root inside church

It took just four weeks to build the Garden Museum, using prefabricated wooden panels from Switzerland.

It opens to the public on 19 November in St Mary-at-Lambeth, beside Lambeth Bridge, with a retrospective of Beth Chatto, one of Britain's most influential living gardeners.

The £500,000 gallery replaces the old Museum of Garden History, a much smaller exhibition in the 14th-century church. The new museum is entirely freestanding so that the ancient walls of the church are not damaged.

A collection of delicate paintings, books, postcards and photographs which could not be displayed in the old museum will become the centrepiece of the new one.

It will also host a programme of talks and debates on the future of gardens, designs and ideas. The first season's series is already fully booked.

Garden Museum director Christopher Woodward said: "What's exciting is we are seeing this beautiful medieval church uncluttered and, in a matter of weeks, this new structure rising up inside which we think is really beautiful. It's a ground-breaking use of new building technology. It enables us to put on displays for the first time of our collection of works of art. We will be the first gallery in Britain dedicated to gardens and garden design."

The permanent collection includes photographs of Londoners in their gardens dating back 100 years. There is also space for temporary exhibitions.

The first is the retrospective of Mrs Chatto, known for her pioneering, ecological approach to gardening.

In the Sixties she transformed a patch of waste ground behind her husband's Essex fruit farm into her eponymous garden one of Britain's best-loved The story of its creation is told through private archives, paintings and photographs.

Mrs Chatto, 85, rarely leaves Essex but will be at the museum's private launch on 18 November.

St Mary was a parish church for more than 500 years but after its congregation dwindled it was deconsecrated and turned into the Museum of Garden History in 1977. Its grounds contain the family tomb of famous 17th-century plant hunters the Tradescants, who were gardeners to royalty and some of England's earliest botanists. The new museum was designed by the Wandsworth Common-based Dow Jones practice. They wanted to create a practical exhibition space in the church which would set off the historic building.

Trustees and supporters of the museum include the Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury, The Hon James Ogilvy, Viscountess Rothermere, Tom Stuart-Smith, Lady Tania Compton and Lady Egremont.