Garden festivals uniquely precipitate and mark urban change with a celebratory, transformative and memorable event. Originating with the 1951 Hanover Bundesgartenschau, they have been identified with major reclamation projects, novel planning stratagems, major expositions of horticulture and public art, and the creation of new urban parks. Their influence on the urban scene, while not dominant, is sustained. Since Hanover there have been over fifty garden festivals, with seven more scheduled up to 2013. Despite occasional Asian and North American festivals they remain primarily a European phenomenon, with most having occurred in Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain. This study focuses on festivals in these three countries, which display similarities due to their more common occurrence.

The term ‘garden festival’ may be somewhat misleading to those who are not familiar with these projects. It is likely to conjure an image of a modest, small-scale event limited to domestic floriculture and with a short-term impact on urban life. Garden festivals are, as will be shown, almost the exact opposite in every respect. They offer a unique concordance of garden and urban culture and have a demonstrated potential to substantially improve the public realm so vital to the quality of our civic life.

This project began while I was a graduate student at the School of Design at Harvard University. A small travel grant presented the opportunity to visit an ongoing British garden festival and to visit the sites of its predecessor festivals. This initial study focused on British events, but it soon became clear that these were influenced by the rich tradition of German garden shows. The study then widened to include the German events, the Dutch Floriades, other legacy sites in France, Austria and Switzerland and more recent Asian and North American events. Several more exploratory trips followed and in the end over 15 sites were visited and revisited. What follows then has been garnered from numerous reports, published papers, articles, promotional literature and interview transcriptions as well as a compilation of selected photographs, masterplans and other graphic representations of festival landscapes. Additionally, several festival sites were visited and explored twice – during the key exhibition stage and the following post-festival development phase.