What are Garden Festivals?

A garden festival may be thought of, roughly, as a world's fair but with a strong horticultural theme and presence. A large tract of derelict, abandoned or otherwise under-utilized urban land is acquired and made suitable for development. The site is ‘trapped’ for the duration of an exposition, typically five to six months. At the end of this period festival exhibits are dismantled and the site moves to a pre-determined final stage of development, usually, but not always, a new urban park.

This book explores the role of the garden festival in modern urban planning and design. Originating in post-war Europe, they remain primarily a European phenomenon, but with their longevity and recent exports to Asia, Australia and North America the question arises of whether there exists a ‘garden festival movement’. Wilson, in his account of the City Beautiful Movement, describes the particular incidents or features of a movement as ‘incremental gain[s] for a broadly conceived vision’. This ‘vision’, within the context of urban design and planning, ought to be identifiable through its ideology, mode of operation, and design elements. An application of these criteria demonstrates, however, that festivals are not consistent across cultures. German festivals, for example, may share an ideology based on ‘nature in the city’, but this was not an ideology voiced by their British counterparts, whose schemes focused more on employment and economic concerns. Further, while garden festivals seek to transform despoiled or under-utilized urban land, they diverge in the quality, purpose and style of the post-festival condition. Garden festivals, then, are highly complex episodes of markedly phased urban development and to group them all as a ‘movement’ is somewhat problematic – especially now that the British festivals have been discontinued. Nonetheless, differences in festival outcomes must not be exaggerated, since similarities of approach precipitating urban change outweigh dissimilarities in after-use design, and it is possible to speak of garden festivals as employing a common methodology and organizational structure, if not ideology or aesthetic.