National garden festival


The national garden festivals were part of the cultural regeneration of large areas of derelict land in Britain's industrial districts during the 1980s and early 1990s. Five were held in total - one every two years, each in a different town or city - after the idea was pushed by the Conservative environment secretary Michael Heseltine in 1980. They were based on the German post-war Bundesgartenschau concept for reclaiming large areas of derelict land in cities, and cost from £25-million to £70 million each. They reclaimed the contaminated ex-sites of large industrial concerns such as steelworks.