National garden festival

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The National Garden Festivals were events held in the UK during the 1980s and early 1990s to promote the cultural regeneration of large areas of derelict land in industrial districts. Five were held in total – one every two years, each in a different town or city^{[citation needed]} – after the idea was pushed by the Conservative environment secretary Michael Heseltine in 1980.^[1]

National Garden Festivals were based on the German Bundesgartenschau concept, introduced post-war to reclaim large derelict industrial plots. The Festivals cost from £25 million to £70 million each, and the land they reclaimed included the contaminated former sites of steelworks and other heavy industry.