Garden Museum Literary Festival

The Garden Museum is delighted to announce the fifth Literary Festival, to take place over the weekend of 7^th and 8^th July 2018. Begun in 2013, the world’s only festival dedicated to writing inspired by gardens has travelled from garden to garden across Britain, but this year – for one time only – will take place in London, to celebrate the reopened Museum and new gardens and café. Chefs from the lauded new restaurant will also be creating a special menu for the weekend for guests to savour.*

As the Festival will be in London, the theme will be what makes green spaces unique. Confirmed speakers include Iain Sinclair; Tim Richardson on his favourite cult garden writers;  Todd Longstaffe-Gowan on the surprises of Georgian town gardens; Allan Jenkins on early-morning gardening; Leif Bersweden on hunting down all of Britain’s orchids; Charlie Hart and Kate Bradbury on how building a garden helped through a period of mourning and grief; Will Ashon on Epping Forest; Miriam Darlington on owls and Jon Dayon pigeons; Tom Stuart-Smith on designing for cities; Ken Worpole on the floral shrines of our streets; novelist Sofka Zinovieff on gardens real and imaginary.

We will also have a programme of foodie talks centred around seasonality, foraging and London’s food history, featuring Bee Wilson, Mark Diacono, Lia Leendertz and Leah Hyslop.

The full line-up and daily timetable will be announced in mid-May.

Christopher Woodward, Director of the Garden Museum, says:

‘We began our Festival to celebrate good writing inspired by gardens, whether design and art, memoir or fiction. We’ve skipped from garden to garden, with a programme inspired by each place: Serge Hill, the walled garden at Petworth, Hatfield House and last year Boughton House, a slumbering Baroque masterpiece in Northamptonshire.

This year the Festival is coming to London to celebrate the new building, gardens – and the talents of chefs Harry Kaufman and George Ryle. And to share the many garden stories that London has to tell.

The joy of this Festival is that it’s small, friendly, and fresh. You won’t be queueing at the back of a big tent to hear a speaker trotting out their on-tour talk. Just green voices and green thoughts in an urban oasis.’