Gardening is often spoken of as an art, but is it? An in-depth but not too serious look at some of the issues that surround looking at gardening as an art. Noel Kingsbury argues that treating gardening as art involves giving it more serious attention than simply as a ‘hobby’ activity that gets pushed to the back of the Sunday colour supplement. It can also be a very democratic art form, attracting practitioners from all walks of life and backgrounds; but…. it can be pretty pretentious too! This fascinating talk will be illustrated with a wide variety of Noel’s own photographs and images from around the world.

Noel Kingsbury is internationally known as an innovator, writer and teacher in the fields of gardening and planting design. His ‘New Perennial Garden’ of 1994 helped launch the current wave of interest in naturalistic planting design. He has published around 25 books including four with Dutch designer Piet Oudolf, and also writes more generally about plants and our relationship to them; he has written two books on trees and the only comprehensive history of plant breeding (both ornamental and agricultural), and for five years co-chaired the Vista seminars at London’s Garden Museum - a forum for the discussion of how gardens and landscapes are part of a wider intellectual world.

The cost of this talk is £15 and includes entry to Sculpture by the Lakes.