Summer Gardens Show & Tell with Karen Guthrie and Grace Holland

Join inspirational gardeners Karen Guthrie & Grace Holland as they share glorious pictures and advice gleaned from their summer research trips to iconic public and private gardens in the UK and Northern Europe.

With a focus on the work of some of the most innovative gardeners of our times including John Little, Jo McKerr and Piet Oudolf, Karen and Grace will reveal the inspiration and commitment to enhancing biodiversity behind their pioneering gardens, whilst sharing valuable tips and advice picked up along the way.

Awarded funding from the Royal Horticultural Society, Cumbria Community Foundation and The Professional Gardeners’ Trust, Karen and Grace’s trips will inform the future development of The Farmer’s Arms land and gardens.

About the speakers:

Karen Guthrie is an artist and filmmaker, raised on the west coast of Scotland and a resident of the South Lakes for twenty years. Since 2009 she has been Warden & Head Gardener at Lawson Park, Grizedale Arts’ headquarters and residency base, a former hill farm above Coniston Water. Described by broadcaster Eric Robson as ‘a triumph’, the land now extends to around 4 acres including orchards, water gardens, no-dig vegetable beds, herbaceous borders, meadows, bespoke outbuildings and most things in between. Karen is especially interested in naturalistic low-maintenance herbaceous planting and in growing and preserving fruit and veg. Regularly working with volunteers at Lawson Park and at The Farmer’s Arms, she has a design role in this first garden redevelopment phase.  

Grace Holland grew up down the road in Ulverston feels very lucky to have had The Lakes as her childhood stomping ground. An epiphany moment whilst apple picking in an abandoned walled garden led her to realise she wanted to work outside, but with plants rather than people! She enrolled on a year long, organic food growing course at a nearby market garden, through which she met Gary Primrose, a wonderful local gardener and began an informal traineeship working alongside him in various notable Lakeland gardens. At the same time, Grace was a founding member of The Coppice Co-op, a worker’s cooperative based near Silverdale, that restores neglected, previously coppiced woodlands in the area. 12 years later, Grace now works part time for Grizedale Arts at Lawson Park and The Farmer’s Arms, as well as managing the gardens at Blackwell House for Lakeland Arts. She lives just north of Kendal with her partner, their two small children and an old dog.