The Garden Museum was founded in 1977 to save the historic church of Saint-Mary-at-Lambeth from demolition and is the world's first museum of garden history. The Museum honours the two John Tradescants, noted 17th-century gardeners, both buried in the church graveyard. The collection paints a broad and revealing picture of the changing ideas and passions of the British garden. Although modest in size, funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (Collecting Cultures), in 2008, has enabled the Museum to continue to strengthen its holdings of artworks and artists' views of gardens. The earliest painting in the collection, 'Elegant Company Playing a Game of Lawn Bowls', c.1600–1610, and the oldest portrait 'John Wells, Gardener at Debdale', c.1840, have recently been joined by one of the earliest painted views of an urban allotment, Francis Dodd's 'Gardens at Hammersmith Allotments', 1929.