A Garden Manifesto & The Night Garden Party

Alys Fowler is a gardener and an award-winning journalist who has written for the weekend Guardian about gardening and the environment. She has written eleven books, including Hidden Nature, which was shortlisted for the Wainwright prize in 2018, and her first work of fiction, The Woman Who Buried Herself, published in 2021 by Hazel Press. Her latest book is called Peatlands - A Journey Through Land and Water and is all about bogs. She trained in horticulture at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the New York Botanical Gardens and it is through her love of plants and ecology that she came to writing. She has written for numerous publications including the National Geographic, the Observer, the Guardian, Time Out, Gardens Illustrated, Red Magazine and Country Living.

Jonny Bruce is a gardener and writer who trained at Great Dixter before spending four formative years at the organic plant nursery, De Hessenhof, in the Netherlands. Following the death of Keith Collins in 2018 Jonny became the primary gardener at Prospect Cottage in Kent. Alongside his commitments at Prospect Cottage, Jonny works as a freelance gardener and design consultant and is in the process of setting up an organic plant nursery.

Joy Gregory is an acclaimed photographer who uses video, digital and analogue photography and even Victorian print processes especially to reference history and cultural differences in contemporary society. She is the recipient of numerous awards and has exhibited all over the world showing in many festivals and biennales. Her work included in many collections including the V&A, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, and Yale British Art Collection. Joy created a pocket Tube map cover, A Little Slice of Paradise that featured a cyanotype and photographs of flowers as a tribute to the Transport for London staff who have cultivated station gardens across the decades.

Olivia Laing is an internationally acclaimed writer and critic, who books have been translated into twenty-one languages. They’re the author of eight books, including The Lonely City, Everybody and the Sunday Times number one bestseller, The Garden Against Time. The last was one of most praised books of last year: an account of inhabiting and restoring an overgrown paradise, full of abundance and possibility, but also the notion of gardens as rebel outposts and communal dreams. Laing’s first novel, Crudo, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and in 2018 they were awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction.

Richard Porter is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, drawing, installation, moving image and performance. Since 2017 he is the founder and editor of Pilot Press, a small press dedicated to retrieving a philosophy of artist’s publishing lost to AIDS and capitalism. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions internationally, including at Amanda Wilkinson, The Modern Institute, Gordon Robichaux and John Hansard Gallery. He lives and works in London.

This is an in-person only event in the British Library Knowledge Centre. Please arrive no later than 15 minutes before the start time of this event.  If you have specific access requirements please email customer@bl.uk

There are a range of concessions available. These include discounts for British Library Members, half-price tickets for students and under 26s, free entry for carers as well as a number of other concessions.