Gardens are very much at the heart of this year’s Broadway Arts Festival (broadwayartsfestival.com), which is featuring renowned 19^th-century artist and garden designer Alfred Parsons RA, a key figure in the Broadway Colony.

While based in Broadway, Parsons designed not only the garden of Luggers Hall, where he lived, but also that of Russell House (which belonged to Frank Millet) and Court Farm, where the American actress Mary Anderson (later de Navarro) set up home.  All three contain some of Parsons’ signature garden features, such as a rose garden, a nut walk, topiary in eccentric shapes and garden buildings in Arts & Crafts style.  For the first time in decades, the gardens of Russell House and Court Farm will be open to the public, offering a rare opportunity to view some of Parsons’ garden design.

Landscape historian and designer Marion Mako (makogardens.co.uk) will be giving tours of the gardens, preceded by two different talks.  On Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 June, Marion’s talk is entitled “Parsons at Broadway” and is followed by tours of both Luggers Hall and Russell House; on Thursday 14 June and Friday 15 June, Mako will talk about “Alfred Parsons and Gardening Friends”, followed by a tour of Court Farm.

In addition, Nicole Milette (nicolemilette.com), a Canadian artist and university teacher with a PhD in architecture and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, spent five years researching and writing about Alfred Parsons, who was the subject of her thesis. She will be giving a lecture on Parsons on Monday 11 June.

Opening the Broadway Arts Festival on Saturday 9 June is Sir Roy Strong, who will – once his ceremonial duties are over – talk about his own Laskett Gardens, the largest private formal gardens to be created in England since 1945.  He and his late wife, the designer Dr Julia Trevelyan Oman, have transformed a four-acre field in Herefordshire into a series of stunning garden rooms, vistas, ascents and descents, which include a rose garden, pleached lime avenue, orchard, kitchen garden, knot garden, fountains and parterres, as well as a spectacular array of topiary and rich herbaceous and prairie style borders. Uniquely, the garden tells the story of both their marriage and their creative lives in the arts.

Last, but by no means least, there will be a flower festival, open for the duration of the Festival, at St Michael and All Angels Church.  The theme of the flower festival is ‘In the Garden’, influenced by the work of Alfred Parsons, but the exact details of the design are being kept secret in order to surprise visitors.

For full details of all these events and the Broadway Arts Festival’s full programme, please visit the website (broadwayartsfestival.com).