Dahlias thrust their colours skywards; hollyhocks frame a child at play; peasants tend cabbages; water lilies dot the surface of a pond. The “impressionist garden” captures all of these moments and more.

But why were Monet, Renoir, Morisot, Pissarro and their colleagues so attracted to gardens? It’s a subject I sought to answer in my book In the Gardens of Impressionism.

One answer lies in the sheer ubiquity and sensory intensity of gardens by the second half of the 19th century, when impressionism came into being. Social change that made leisure gardens accessible to all (no longer just kings and aristocrats) combined with “the great horticultural movement” – the introduction of new and exotic plants, trees and flowers as a result of imperial expansion, international trade and developments in technology.

“Ward cases”, named after their British inventor, botanist Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, facilitated the transportation of live plants across the world. Glass and iron construction gave rise to greenhouses that allowed exotic and tender plants to be overwintered. New understanding of hybridisation, fuelled by Charles Darwin’s discoveries, made flowers ever bigger, more scented or overtly decorative, while also boosting commercial vegetable growing.

Gardens, in short, were central to the “modern life” that the impressionists radically pursued – answering powerfully their desire to capture the sensations of the present moment in spontaneous brushwork and vibrant palette.

In Paris, the new parks introduced by Napoleon III from the 1850s were essential to public hygiene: green lungs........

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