Stoke Garden Festival - 25year Celebration Events

Stoke Garden Festival - 25year Celebration Events
14th April - Ruthie Ford: Giant knit and Crochet Flowers

The theme of the 1986 National Garden Festival in Stoke was "Art, Architecture and Landscape Design" - around 120 new works were created by 100 artists, including Antony Gormley and Vincent Woropay, Dhruva Biswas and Denise de Cordova.

rednile commissioned a series of new artworks and activities inspired by the original National Garden Festival artworks to be showcased at a series of events around the site in April and May 2012.

Giant knit and Crochet Flowers involved the creation of giant knit and crochet flowers. The work is a continuation, exploration and development of the series of giant crocheted and fabric craft daffodils which Ruthie made last year which were displayed in shop and library windows and then toured summer musical festivals.
The new work was installed on a hill in the National Garden Festival Park overlooking the retail park during the event in April.
It explored, using the giant blooms to engage the public with the world around them by encouraging the viewer to look up at the flowers and wonder what lies beyond.
The choice of flowers and the stitches and patterns used to cover them are inspired by the magazine Woman’s Weekly who sponsored two of the gardens on the site during the 1986 festival; a cottage garden and a wildflower garden. Woman’s Weekly, among other things, regularly features knit and crochet patterns and gardening tips.

the giant blooms engage the public with the world around them by
encouraging the viewer to look up at the flowers and wonder what lies beyond.

view over the retail park - in the left distance is St. Marks Church - to the right is the woodland ridge

At the opening ceremony in 1986, Conservative Environment Secretary Kenneth Baker
predicted 5,000 people would work on the trade zone created when the festival closed.
Twenty-five years later, 6,200 people work in Festival Park and adjoining Etruria Valley
– about 3,000 of them on the original festival site.

The choice of flowers and the stitches and patterns used to cover them are inspired by the
magazine Woman’s Weekly who sponsored two of the gardens on the site during the 1986 festival

beyond the giant flowers are these small blooms - made by the public and set in the labyrinth area