April 2009 The Very Hungry Caterpillar comes to St Albans

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The Very Hungry Caterpillar comes to St Albans
– Iconic children’s book character to feature at Future Gardens –

Families visiting the most anticipated new garden event near St Albans can expect to see a wellknown character in a special garden designed to highlight the delights of edible plants and the benefits of growing your own food.

Visitors to Future Gardens, the launch-pad event of the ground-breaking Butterfly World Project, will come face-to-face with Eric Carle’s ‘Very Hungry Caterpillar’. The world’s most famous caterpillar will feature in its very own garden, aptly named after it.

Designed by Ivan Hicks – chief landscape designer for the Butterfly World Project – the garden takes some inspiration from the multi-award winning children’s story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar,and will feature the star of the story in munching his way through colourful, edible plants of all shapes and sizes. .

The iconic children’s book which celebrates its 40th birthday this year is loved by families everywhere and teaches, amongst other things, about the life cycle of a butterfly and about different types of food. ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ is one of the world’s best-selling children’s books; 29 million copies have been sold since its first publication and one copy is sold every 30 seconds somewhere in the world.

In the edible Very Hungry Caterpillar Garden, families will be able to walk around three raised flower beds and feast their eyes on an abundance of edible plants including fruit trees, runner beans, artichokes, cardoons, cabbages, ruby chard, seakale, courgettes, marrows, sweetcorn, salad leaves, sunflowers and nasturtiums. Returning visitors will be able to see how the garden develops over time as the food grows.

Ivan Hicks, chief landscape designer of Butterfly World Project, said: “As one of the best-selling children’s books of the last four decades, I’m sure the Very Hungry Caterpillar Garden will really strike a chord with our visitors. The garden will be delightful – filled with interesting shapes and wonderful colours. We are sure discovering ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ will be as exciting for those who have enjoyed the book as a youngster as for those children enjoying it today for the first time.

“Aside from the fun aspect of the garden, we want to spark the imagination of visitors by encouraging them to think more seriously about developing their own gardens and making a positive impact on our environment – helping to protect our native moths and butterflies.

“Most importantly though, we want our visitors to enjoy themselves, learn something new and take pleasure in what they see.”

Eric Carle’s famous character will also feature in a specially designed ‘Solardome Classroom’ – a space for school groups to reflect and learn more about what they have experienced. Very Hungry Caterpillar merchandise, including lunchboxes and the new 40th edition book, will be available to buy onsite.

Visitors to Future Gardens, open from 5th June to 4th October, will be taken on a fascinating journey through a variety of unique and thought-provoking contemporary landscapes. As well as 12 evolving designer gardens, there will be permanent gardens which acknowledge the fascinating anatomy of the butterfly, such as land art ‘antennae’ walk-ways and a spiral ‘proboscis’ walk.

Permanent gardens opening in 2009 will include three leaf shaped gardens; the ’Through the Flowerpot Garden’ will allow visitors to see the world from an insect’s eye view, the ‘Spangle Gall Garden’ will engage children in designing gardens which will sit in butterfly egg-shaped beds, and the ‘Unexpected Habitats Garden’ will show how even the strangest of man-made objects can create an ecologically sensitive habitat for native insects and creatures.

Future Gardens is the first sustainable garden event of its kind in the UK. It will showcase 12 outstanding designs which were submitted by a range of international designers, from the award winning to new emerging talent. Almost 100 designers worldwide responded to an exciting brief, looking for pioneering garden designs to acknowledge the fragility of our environment and fire the imagination of all generations visiting the event.

High profile designers, including Andy Sturgeon, Tony Heywood and Bruno Marmiroli are amongst those who will showcase their innovative gardens with a maximum budget of £25,000.The Butterfly World Project will see its annual Future Gardens event showcase the highly creative and forward-thinking designs for four months every year. Visitors to the 26 acre site near St Albans will be able to see at first hand how gardens mature and evolve throughout the seasons.

Future Gardens will be open to the public from 5th June to 4th October 2009 and will reopen in June 2010. The world’s largest butterfly dome will be installed in 2011, completing the £27 million world-class visitor attraction, which will then be open twelve months of the year.

www.butterfly-world.org and www.futuregardens.org