The National Year of Reading Garden
The National Year of Reading Garden has been inspired by the pleasures of reading for children and grown-ups alike, and is full of surprises – careful exploration is rewarded with imaginative treats and novel perspectives. Visitors first experience the garden through a ‘bedroom’, where for many of us our happiest reading takes place, and then take a walk through an unexpected landscape where plants are not always set in a conventional context, or even in the ‘right’ hemisphere.
A diverse range of reading sources is interwoven to bring the garden to life, from The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle to Philippa Gregory’s novels on the lives of the plant-hunting Tradescants, and from Peter Pan to gardening encyclopaedias.
The National Year of Reading 2008 celebrates reading anything, anytime, anywhere. It encourages and reminds us to start with what we love to read, be that picture books or walking guides, journalism or love letters. This garden is for the whole community – a shared public space in which to read, to be inspired by reading and to celebrate the joy of reading with everyone.