THE Bowes Museum continues its 125th anniversary celebrations this month with the opening of two new exhibitions inspired by horticulture.

Turkish Tulips presents recent work – along with a neat pun on his name – by leading contemporary artist Gavin Turk, making a return visit to the museum, in collaboration with other renowned artists including Damien Hirst, Cornelia Parker and Sir Peter Blake.

It has recently been on show in Amsterdam, symbolic home of the tulip, and comes to the Bowes as part of a grand tour of Europe and the Middle East.

A complementary exhibition, The Clockwork Garden, promises a magical experience from The House of Fairy Tales, a children’s arts charity founded by Gavin Turk and Deborah Curtis to bring creative learning experiences to children and young people throughout the UK.

In Turkish Tulips, contemporary pieces will be interwoven among permanent artworks throughout the decorative halls, examining the story of the bloom and designed to open up new perspectives on the Bowes Museum collection.

Visitors will discover an extraordinary variety of floral designs containing hidden tulips ranging across furniture, ceramics, silver and paintings.

“The exhibition provokes curiosity, challenging us to see things in a new light," said Dr Howard Coutts, keeper of ceramics, and curator of the exhibition.

"The familiar becomes unfamiliar as the tulip’s important role in history is presented through tales of romance, beauty, obsession, inequality and extravagance as well as scientific discoveries through the enlightenment.”

Other artists showing work include Michael Craig-Martin, Fiona Banner, Mat Collishaw, Adam Dant and Yinka Shonibare.

Said Turk: “Josephine and John Bowes travelled Europe gathering cultural artefacts as traders did with tulip bulbs hundreds of years before. As a Turk by name, the Turkish origins of these flowers make them all the more playful and relevant."

The Clockwork Garden will see the main gallery space filled with an interactive exhibition based on the notion that a strange mechanical seed has landed from a far planet. The seed needs to learn the secrets that make gardens full of life and beauty so it can take them back to its own planet, which has no gardens.

The theme will extend outside in the gardens and grounds, where an adventure trail will follow a curious, illustrated map to find tendrils of the seed, complete tasks and challenges and solve clues.

Both exhibitions open on July 29 and run until November 5. Over the weekend of Saturday and Sunday, July 30 and 31, The House of Fairy Tales will present an event for families with tasks and games relating to both exhibitions.

Tickets are available online at www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk or call 01833 690606. The museum is open daily from 10am-5pm.