WESTONBIRT Festival of the Garden is one of only three garden design festivals of its kind in the world and is now in its third year running

Westonbirt Festival of the Garden champions contemporary conceptual garden design with an original edge

The festival, which runs from June 4 to September 12, has attracted over 200 submissions from designers specialising across a wide scope of creative fields, including architecture, fine art, sculpture and photography

Ali Holman Marr is a former director and producer of Performing Arts, not your stereotypical gardener, her design 'et puis je l'embrassai' challenges the boundaries between nature and culture. Ali's garden brings artificiality to nature with spray painted flowers

Brodie McAllister's 'Dust to Dust' garden design, is based partly on a concept called 'green burial' - a movement pioneered in the USA and Australia to bury people with ritual and respect but without material fuss

Landscape architects Jessica Read & Frauke Materlik have used heat, water, bright red colours, desert, oasis, shelter, enclosure, sharp light and reflections as key elements of the inspiration behind their organic Soil Association supported garden, 'Time Looms'

Mira Engler has gone back to Arthurian legend for inspiration - her 'The Otherworld Garden' is embedded in local myth and culture and draws from Celtic mythology using fantastical animals and magical objects

Gardens at Westonbirt are confined to a minimum of 150m2 and a maximum of 200m2

Over 100,000 visitors attended the event last year

The 2005 Festival is currently being planned. A creative brief and application form for 2005 is available now via the Festival website: www.festivalofthegarden.com and the closing date for 2005 submissions is 1st November 2004

The National Arboretum, home to Westonbirt Festival of the Garden is a grade 1 listed landscape

An extraordinary collection of over 18,000 species of trees and woody shrubs, maintained and preserved for the nation by the Forestry Commission since 1956

With over 3,700 different species of trees and shrubs, the Arboretum enjoys a unique role as a 'tree zoo' for the British Isles.

For information call 01666 880220 or visit the Westonbirt Festival of the Garden website at: www.festivalofthegarden.com