Garden Parties: Glorious Fun or a Disaster Waiting to Happen?

Is the only reason anyone has a garden now… to throw a party in it?

This week James Alexander-Sinclair and Joe Swift take on the great British garden party — and James goes full grumpy old codger about outdoor kitchens, outdoor rugs, and the terrible idea that a garden is just an extra room with a bar in it. Joe, of course, is having none of it.

Along the way: the impossible dilemma of balancing a cucumber sandwich, a cup of tea AND shaking the King's hand at a Buckingham Palace do; James eating his way through Le Manoir as a wandering MC; watching England on a bedsheet in the middle of a Welsh woodland; Joe's straw-bale 60th that turned into a festival; the perils of the damp fire pit and the friend who set his hair alight on a Green Egg; Arne Maynard's amphitheatre; a Japanese roof garden with motion-sensor music; and, inevitably, James's unstoppable march towards pop stardom.

Tell us about the best garden party you've ever been to — and the worst (the one that ended in A&E).

To ask us a question email gnome@jamesandjoegarden.com or go to our website www.jamesandjoegarden.com

About our hosts
James Alexander-Sinclair is a garden designer, writer and broadcaster. He is an RHS Vice-President and was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal for outstanding contribution to horticulture in 2022.
Joe Swift is a familiar face on television as a presenter of BBC TV's Gardeners' World and other gardening programmes. He is a garden designer, broadcaster, writer and design director of Modular.

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www.jamesandjoegarden.com