It's a funny feeling
doing something and feeling that what you are doing might be the
start of something really major. I had that feeling on Saturday at
the first Gardens Illustrated Festival, in Malmesbury, a small and
very picturesque town in southern England. It was an event we had
been planning for over a year, and dreaming about much longer. When
it finally happened there was that wonderful feeling that perhaps
this was the start of something.
A few years ago I had
spoken at the Swarthmore Convention, an annual get-together just
outside Philadelphia. It was a great experience – 750 plus people,
from all aspects of the garden world and indeed beyond – I was much
impressed by all the folk from the landscape profession, who could be
used as 'plant users' rather than gardeners as such, plus nursery
people, amateurs and people from the community garden network. The US
however does have a much stronger tradition of people getting
together to learn, network and share experience.
So, early last year,
the designer Annie Guilfoyle and I sat down over a bottle of wine,
and about halfway through we had decided that we should try and
organise something similar. She had been to an event for garden
design professionals which had been run by Chris Marchant of Orchard
Dene Nurseries – the number one stop for contemporary perennials in
Britain. Annie, unlike most Britsh garden people, was also getting
into going to conferences in mainland Europe: I Maestri del Paesaggio
at Bergamo and ISU (Hardy Plant Union) in Germany.
Gardening can be a very
solitary occupation, particularly for those professional involved.
The opportunities to meet others, or to do professional development,
are quite limited. Amateur gardeners are perhaps a more sociable lot
- indeed many garden clubs feel more social than horticultural.
Garden clubs however tend to operate on quite a local basis, and the
opportunities to hear or meet top-notch people in the profession are
limited.
We in Britain have a
tradition of short-duration flower shows, which to some extent have
added on a lecture or workshop component, but not usually very
successfully - I have had two awful experiences lecturing at the
otherwise very good Malvern show. Apart from anything else, people
are not in a sitting down and listening mode, they are too distracted
by what we call in English 'all the fun of the fair'. If they sit
down they do so to eat their sandwiches, discuss things they have
seen with the people they have come with, or fall asleep; anyone who
does a presentation at one of these shows will be familiar with these
behaviours.
No, Annie and I wanted
to create a forum where the listening and communicating came first.
We talked over various options and in the end, as neither of us
fancied taking on the logistics, took it to Juliet Roberts, editor of
Gardens Illustrated, who almost immediately said that she'd like us
to work together, as it was something that she had been thinking of
for sometime herself. The company who own the magazine took on the
logistics and a year later, it all happened, thanks to the enthusiasm
of Marie Davies, the publisher herself. The gods smiled and poured
sunshine onto southern England. People came, listened, talked, bought
and went away happy, informed and inspired.
What we were aiming
for, and I think achieved, was something of the character of a
literary festival, one which was accessible in its location, pricing
and outreach. People pay for the events they want to go to, wander
about the town, visit the marquee where a small selection of stands
sold their wares, visit the famous and rather relentlessly colouful
Abbey Gardens, hang out in the cafe – etc. And we had a team of
garden staff from Sissinghurst who camped out locally (brrrrr) and
ran a garden advice clinic, and a garden design clinic run by Rosie
Nottage.
We need however, to
think about next year. We want suggestions as to who and what we
include. There is a fundamental need to 'play safe' and have big
names to achieve the proverbial 'bums on seats' but we have to
provide opportunities for less well-known people in the garden world
to be heard as well, and to create spaces for discussion and debate
(after all, we don't all agree on everything all the time do we?) and
perhaps most importantly learning opportunities. I would like to see
workshops – where people could learn new skills off experts, panel
discussions where issues could be aired and events that linked
gardening to the wider world of the arts, philosophy and society. So
we'd like to hear from you.
Missed it!
Come to Gardens in the Wild in lovely Herefordshire. June 20-21.
Interested in learning opportunitities with me in Herefordshire and Devon too - check out my diary left. There are some workshops coming up.
