The first Festival of Garden Literature to take place at the end of June

A Friend, a Book and a Garden: A Festival of Garden Literature is a two-day celebration of the links between writing and gardening

The boutique festival, sponsored by Bloom Gin, will be hosted by Tom and Sue Stuart-Smith at the Barn Garden at the Garden Museum in Hertfordshire on 29 and 30 June. It is the first literary festival to be dedicated to writing about gardens.

Themes include gardens in biography and autobiography and the imaginative influence of ideas of Eden and Arcadia.

Writers, designers and historians appearing at the festival include Lisa Jardine, Diana Athill, Dan Pearson, Sarah Raven and Anna Pavord.

The winners of the Garden Writing Memoir competition, which was featured in the June edition of Writers' News, will read extracts of their work on the second day of the festival.

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