After the Garden Festival...

Though Harding himself didn’t produce work for the Garden Festival, his stamp and influence is all over the Artworks Programme, with his successor Malcolm Robertson, assistant Stan Bonnar and the likes of Shona Kinloch all producing significant work for the event.

Bit pricey, this - but it is an extremely unusual bit of GGF merch. ebay.co.uk/itm/3179850829…

Good news. Next up needs to be the Glasgow Garden Festival waterfall in Festival Park and Kelvingrove Park’s Kelvin Wheelies skatepark.

Garden Festival Book update: read-through and fact-checking with another two veteran GGF designers this morning went well. Also currently awaiting confirmation (or otherwise) that a future Turner Prize winner worked as a chef in a Garden Festival cafe!

Two major #glasgow roads for the price of one in this stunning aerial photo from around 1990. The M8 and Clydeside Expressway are both visible, as is a still new SECC! The Garden Festival site has been cleared but what else stands out? #archives #1990s

Bell's Bridge being lowered into place by the 250-tonne Mersey Mammoth floating crane, 4th November 1987. What is now the Crown Plaza hotel is just beginning to be built. (Credit: Bob Jones archive)

One of the very last remaining new-to-me Glasgow Garden Festival survivors on the list, so I seized an opportunity to seek out the Walter Segal self-build house at Monimail Tower. Heavily modified but probably one of the only two currently inhabited original GGF structures.

I finally have written conformation of the previously merely anecdotal appearance of live pink flamingoes as part of a garden display in the SEC during the Garden Festival. (Oddly, via an article quoting the father of one of the biggest contributors to the @AtGF1988 archive.)

Thanks for flagging this up again Niall, of interest of course to @AtGF1988 - and another sad indication that for some organisations, 1988 is not old enough to be considered as our heritage....

Dear @ScotRail all I want for Christmas this year is for you to please do something about improving the state of Glasgow artist Willie Rodger’s mural at Exhibition Centre Station. We exchanged tweets about the condition of the artwork in March 2024 but since then it’s only gotten progressively worse. Given that last year 1.773 million people used the station to get to places like the SEC, it’s not a good look for Glasgow and nor is it for you as the mural was commissioned by you, Scotrail, in 1988 for the Glasgow Garden Festival. Considering this year is the 850th anniversary of Glasgow securing Burgh status, and the mural’s 29 panels depict over one hundred years of Finnieston's history, perhaps it might be a nice gesture to Glaswegians to do something about it especially as no one else can gain access across a live railway line?

@LambLex and I are in Kirkintilloch this evening giving a talk about before and after the @AtGF1988 to the local antiquarian society. Big audience!

Even more importantly, it looks like there might be another (green) engine at the back for reversal purposes - and if the paint's retained there, too, then that's the unsponsored loco, leaving only the House of Fraser one unaccounted for. (Credit: Severn Lamb Ltd)

This is rather fine news: a recent photo has appeared of the GGF train that was relocated to Rusutu Resort, Japan - and it turns out it's still got its Tate & Lyle sponsorship paint job! Hello, Mr Cube.

@SGHETorg @C20Society Blimey, yes! What a wonderful and slightly scandalous Garden Festival tale - thanks…

@C20Society Interesting reversal of fortune @AtGF1988

Good news Friday: A restored sculpture of the world-famous potter Josiah Wedgwood has been unveiled at Etruria Hall in Stoke-on-Trent, two years after it was nearly destroyed. ‘Capo’ was created by artist Vincent Woropay (1951–2002) for the 1986 National Garden Festival in Stoke-on-Trent. After the festival the freestanding brick portrait was put into storage, but was later rediscovered and in 2009 was installed on the roadside near the site of Josiah Wedgwood’s former home, Etruria Hall, now a hotel. However disaster struck in 2023 when the sculpture was reduced to a pile of bricks, in ‘a significant operational error’ by council contractors working on a road widening scheme. The incident sparked widespread anger and prompted a council investigation. The ensuing scandal brought down the Deputy Leader of the Council, who told officers “nothing lasts forever. Best get rid” in an email supporting the sculpture’s removal, and admitting his part in the ‘poor decision making’ that had led to Capo’s demolition. The fiasco also led to the council issuing new guidance to protect heritage assets. Over the past two years Capo has been restored by Hanley-based heritage conservation firm Alliance Technical Services, using many of the original bricks that were salvaged after the incident. It was unveiled on 26th October 2025 by the artist's widow and the Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent, at a new location in the centre of the landscaped turning circle outside Etruria Hall.

The Festival Pavilion, by the South Rotunda. Originally part of a Bothwell tomato nursery, now part of Brookside Garden Centre near Larkhall.

You've got less than a week, folks! ebay.co.uk/itm/3766965434…

The other two, of course, were the South Rotunda and the Four Winds building (another accumulator tower; both provided hydraulic pressure to run cranes and coal lifts around Prince's Dock).

The campanile of Prince’s Dock Auxiliary Accumulator Tower - one of three listed buildings on the Garden Festival site, all of which were refurbished ahead of the event. A sponsor for the intended 'sound and light experience for children' could not be found so it remained empty.

@wishimage @newglasgowsoc @74frankfurt @PastGlasgow @LostGlasgow @is_glasgow Perhaps a side effect of the current Glasglow tribute?