National Garden Festival Collection
One of our volunteers Paul Niblett recently donated his collection relating to the National Garden Festival movement.
The festival ran every other year between 1984 and 1992, and was an initiative to help develop derelict industrial land in and around cities. The idea of then environment secretary Michael Heseltine, the first was held in Liverpool in 1984. Subsequently they were held in Stoke-on-Trent in 1986; Glasgow, 1988; Gateshead, 1990; and Ebbw Vale, 1992.
The collection includes souvenir guide books, maps, promotional material (plastic bags, beer mats) and press clippings.
Taking the Stoke-on-Trent festival, we learn that this ran from 1 May to 26 October 1986. Admission wasn’t cheap: £4.50 for an adult day ticket, or £12 for a family. For this there was plenty to do, such as seventy themed gardens to visit, woodland walks, a large covered area with garden-related displays, a cable car and 2.5 miles of festival railway track. The fold-out map was 20p, the official guidebook £1.95. An official souvenir publication was produced in advance (included in the collection) to solicit interest in the event.
The intention of the festival was to showcase the potential regeneration of what are now called ‘brownfield’ sites. Stoke-on-Trent’s event was held on the site of a disused steelworks, for example. The scale was huge: Stoke-on-Trent’s was on a 118-acre site and billed as ‘the biggest leisure event in Europe’ that year. 2.2 million people came to visit. While not a financial success at the time, a report by the local paper Evening Sentinel in 1990 reported that more than 2,000 jobs had been generated on the site in the four years following.
The final garden festival was in Ebbw Vale in 1992, after which it was decided the movement had run its course.
