On a more playful note, I love the idea of having public garden festivals where everyone is invited to come out and admire and enjoy nature, and each other’s company.
The Chelsea Fringe, a volunteer-driven, public garden festival, is only a year old but already had 150 events this summer. According to the Fringe, some 45,000 were exposed to their free community garden events, avant-garde art installations, workshops, dinners, and “street happenings.” Unlike the Chelsea garden show, which has a stringent selection process and then awards prizes, the Chelsea Fringe is totally open-access, designed for the masses. “If it’s interesting, legal and on the topic of plants, gardens, or landscape, it’s in.” The goal now is to spread the Chelsea Fringe to other cities. It already seems to be working: satellite Fringes have popped-up in Vienna, Brighton, Bristol, and Kent.
While there were literally a hundred events this year, so we can’t highlight all of them, a few leaped out at us. Anna Rose Hughes, a UK-based landscape and garden designer, took one of the most forlorn abandoned places…
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