ONE of the UK’s most renowned garden designers will attend this year’s Arley Garden Festival.
Tom Stuart-Smith, who designed a garden at Windsor Castle to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, will give a lecture at the festival which is in its 25th year.
He said: “I am looking forward to being part of this event, which I am aware attracts both horticultural enthusiasts as well as less experienced gardeners.
“Arley is the perfect place for a festival of this kind because it is renowned in the horticultural world for its immaculate gardens and in particular the double herbaceous border.”
Tom has designed a number of gardens for the Chelsea Flower Show, eight were awarded gold medals and three won ‘Best in Show’.
He runs a landscape design practice with an international reputation for making gardens that combine naturalism and modernity.
His work ranges from large gardens and parks that open to the public, to smaller private gardens and he is responsible for the masterplan of the RHS’s new garden at Bridgewater, Salford, to be opened in 2020
Tom’s lecture at the Arley Garden Festival will focus on walled gardens.
He added: “I will be looking at examples as varied as an Islamic garden in the heart of Marrakech to the new Paradise garden at RHS Bridgewater and of course the proposals for a Memorial Garden soon to be built at Arley Hall.”
Every year around 5,000 garden enthusiasts visit the festival. Among the highlights are specialist plant nurseries, a floral marquee, food fair, craft stalls and question time with gardening experts.
There’s also live music, a classic car display and children’s entertainment. In the countryside marquee visitors will be able to enjoy stick making, coppice fencing and willow weaving demonstrations.
Meanwhile, green-fingered school pupils will create their own show gardens, which will be given awards based on the votes of judges and the public.
Event organiser Helen Begent said: “This is such a landmark for us that we have got some special plans to celebrate the occasion as well as all the usual elements that have made it such a successful show over the years,” she said.
The Arley Garden Festival is open 10am to 5pm on June 22 and 23. To book tickets for the Tom Stuart-Smith lecture and the garden festival go to arleyhalland gardens.com or call 01565 777353.
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