Join us for a special evening with acclaimed garden designer and writer Mary Keen, as she introduces her new book Diary of a Keen Gardener.
“‘What’s your favourite garden?’ people ask. And when I answer, ‘Mine, of course,’ they look surprised.” – Mary Keen.
Best known for her internationally celebrated garden designs, Keen turns her attention in this intimate diary to the spaces she loves most – her own back garden and local allotment.
Charting a full year in the gardener’s calendar, Keen reflects on the everyday tasks, discoveries, and pleasures of nurturing plants, alongside the memories and stories they evoke. Her writing combines deep horticultural knowledge with warmth, wit, and curiosity, offering practical insights as well as a rich meditation on time, place, and community.
Joined in conversation with Non Morris, this is a chance to hear directly from one of Britain’s most respected gardening voices, promising to be an inspiring evening for gardeners and readers alike.
Speakers
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Mary Keen
Mary Keen
Mary Keen is an internationally renowned designer who has worked on gardens in France, Corfu and the USA as well as for many high-profile clients in England. She has made several gardens for Lord Rothschild and she also designed the gardens around the new opera house at Glyndebourne. She has lectured in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Vancouver and South Africa as well as in England. For twenty years, she was a member of the National Trust Garden panel which advises on the care of important and historic gardens.
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Non Morris
Non Morris
Non is a writer, garden designer and wildflower hunter. She writes extensively on gardens and plants. She is Contributing Editor at House & Garden, writes regularly for Country Life and has a monthly column for The English Garden, taking over in 2021 from Katherine Swift (The Morville Hours). She has contributed to Gardens Illustrated, The Guardian, The Telegraph and Spectator Online. As a designer, her emphasis is on using plants to create atmosphere. As well as private gardens in London, Suffolk, Sussex and Oxfordshire, public projects include the Fox Garden at the South London Gallery, the Church of St Mary the Boltons in South Kensington and currently the Leach Pottery in St Ives. Based in London but frequently travelling in search of wonder, wildness and astonishingly flowery places, her first book, Flora Alpina, The Wild Romance of Mountain Flowers, will be published in 2027
