Thomas Edward Brown’s oft-quoted line, “A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!”, makes horticulture sound quaintly old-fashioned; yet gardening is a hardy perennial in the art world. Paintings of gardens not only survived the advance of Modernism but, according to this ravishing exhibition (until 20 April), they provided much of its inspiration. Claude Monet once confessed: “I perhaps owe it to flowers that I became a painter.”Monet traced his lifelong passion for plants back to his youth in Normandy when, after losing his mother, he found consolation in his aunt’s garden at Sainte-Adresse. With its vivid green lawn, deep blue sky and bright red geraniums, his early painting, Lady in the Garden (1867), set in Sainte-Adresse, is full of sharp contrasts t