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James Wong's Alternative Country Garden

4 Extra Debut. Garden designer James Wong asks if British gardening is stuck in the past. Can innovation be restored at all? From 2016.

Garden designer James Wong asks if British gardening is stuck in the past.

The traditional English Country Garden is synonymous with overflowing beds, informal borders, bees, butterflies and lazy summer afternoons. But for James this idyll is to blame for a lack of innovation and progress in British horticulture.

James argues we should take inspiration from Singapore’s reinvention as a 'City in a Garden'. There, horticulture has been widely seen as a factor in turning the city state from a colonial backwater to a tiger economy in just three decades.

Yet here in Britain, while we claim to be a nation of gardeners, James argues that the idealisation of our past is limiting innovation and alienating the next generation. He digs into our assumptions about what makes a garden and presents an alternative vision for a brave new gardeners’ world.

James takes advice from different schools of design.

He hears from staunch defenders of the English Country Garden as well as those keen to support a horticultural revolution – including the mind behind The Eden Project, Sir Tim Smit, and one of the principle planting designers of London’s Olympic Park, Nigel Dunnett.

Producer: Darby Dorras

A Somethin’ Else production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4, first broadcast in September 2016.

Available now

30 minutes

Last on

Fri 19 Apr 2024 00:30

Broadcasts

  • Fri 16 Sep 2016 11:00
  • Tue 27 Dec 2016 21:00
  • Thu 18 Apr 2024 10:30
  • Thu 18 Apr 2024 16:30
  • Fri 19 Apr 2024 00:30

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