Re~Stirred Forum

The number of people attending Gardeners Weekend has been dropping for several years, which in turn has required its subsidy to be increased. This is shown in the following figures:

2006: Attendence - 19,345; subsidy - £40,000
2007: Attendence - 19,996; subsidy - £50,000
2008: Attendence - 15,740; subsidy - £50,000
2009: Attendence - 15,155; subsidy - £50,000
2010: Attendence - 12,364; subsidy - £72,316

The financial figures do not include the cost of repairing the park afterwards, which in recent years has involved installing new drainage in the park.

In the cases of St Patrick's Day Parade, St George's Day, Vaisakhi, Eid Mela and Birmingham Pride, the Council contributes £20,000 to each event, which in turn attracts up to 80,000 visitors.

No final decision has been made on the future of Gardeners Weekend, but what we are exploring is moving the flower show element of the event to the city centre as part of Arts Fest.

You can add another £17,000 to the subsidy. This is the cost of reinstating Kings Heath Park after the event. So the total cost of the subsidy for 2010 was £89,316.

According to the Birmingham Post, over 15000 attended in 2010

The Council press office offered the Birmingham Mail (which then had the article reproduced in the Birmingham Post) the chance to be given the exact attendance and cost figures, if they would hold back the story to today, Wednesday. They choose not to.

My view on the situation is that we want to re-focus on the flower society and allotment association aspect of Gardeners Weekend. This is what the original Birmingham Flower show in Handsworth Park started as - an end-of-season flower show for all the flower and vegetable societies in Birmingham. It was also a show to inspire other residents to grow flowers and vegetables.

At some point in the last 40 years, the original flower show had a trade show added and with the creation of Gardeners Weekend show - in Kings Heath Park since 1995 - the entire flower show has been submerged under this trade show which requires paid entry.

By moving the flower and vegetable show to the city centre, it will be free and be viewed by 250,000 visitors, instead of the paltry 12,000 it currently attracts.

So moving it to the city centre would save bbc money it would also save me the tax payer money as it would be free it also would be seen by 20 times more people than in the park so all in all its win win win all round there for it will never happen

And local residents will be able to use their local park again over that weekend! I'm afraid its an annual gripe of local dog walkers especially as Highbury Park becomes the car park for the show over the gardeners weekend so is fairly well unusable. The move to the city centre can only be a good thing...

Must admit I do not feel too strongly about this, but it does seem a bit perverse to have a garden show in the city centre? Instead of marques, buildings are to be used...but they will be somewhat scattered around. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Why use buildings? There are bombsites along Digbeth and Curzon Street that would be much improved by a sudden influx of container plants. I can see a variation on Jubilee/Millennium Gardens happening here....

There are two parts to the flower show: the allotments association section and flowers society section.

The allotments section will be in a series of marques in the City Centre Gardens to the rear of Baskerville House. This is now sorted and the cost is being absorbed within the present Arts Fest budget.

We are looking for a historic building for the flower section. Having the flower section in marques in Kings Heath Park has never worked well, especially when it rained. Whenever, it rained we would have to put bark chippings on the ground, which would raise dust, which in turn would negatively impact on the flowers.

We are checking the availability of a number of historic buildings around Centenary Square, which would make an impressive setting for these wonderful flower displays.

I do agree. After every Gardeners Weekend show, I would always received a series of letters from residents, unhappy that they could not access Kings Heath Park and its children's playgrounds for that weekend. On top of that, if it rained during the event, the park would resemble the Somme battlefield for months afterwards.

I never understood why this event needs subsidy given the numbers attending and the high admission prices.

Does Martin know how much it costs o satge and how much is taken in ticket sales?

The cost of hosting the 2010 Gardeners Weekend event (excluding the £17,000 required to repair the park afterwards) was £151,540.94

The most expensive parts of this hosting cost were:
Marques: £24,000
Security: £27,796.50
Marketing: £12,163.27
Preparing the park for the event (ie putting down crushed bark, taking down part of the fencing around the tennis courts, etc): £16,908

The income was:
rent from catering units: £6,300
rent from farmers market: £3,500
ticket sales: £56,114.09

Is the marquee made of gold or something?

There are lots of big marques.

Farmers market??? Where is the money from the people who have stalls there?

It says above. "rent from farmers market: £3,500" - that the money from the stallholders.

Which according to your figures cost £24,000. At least two of them are occupied soley by traders and as I recall part of the largest one is. Given that you state an income of £3,500 from traders it sounds like I was paying out an awful lot of money to subsidise them.

Why is that?

Why does a gardening show need nearly £28,000 worth of security? In case the losers of the vegetable marrow competition get violent?

The £24,000 also includes the marques for the allotment and flower societies.

It's to keep the place secure overnight - there's alot of equipment in the park overnight - plus stop people jumping over the fence and getting in for free.

Massive and spectacular two page picture in today's Guardian of a flower show in Salisbury Cathedral.

So does the £3,500 from traders cover the cots of the marquees they use? I hope so as they still need to contribute towards security (getting in free is a doddle BTW)

The £3,500 comes from the Farmers Market, which merely rents the space in the park.

The income from the horticultural traders is £20,839 - so I guess this would cover the cost of the marquees

But not much towards security, marketing, or preparation and repair of the park.

As far as I am concerned this event means that my son can't play on the swings that weekend, the park is trashed if it rains, and a shedload of my tax is paid out and all in the name of of some secateurs salesmen boosting their income.

The sooner it is binned the better.

That's a vile attitude.
That logic would have all large festivals and events banned from the park.
There was a fun run based there a few weeks ago.
Let's ban that then too...

In fairness, the Gardeners Weekend event is alot different to other events held in our parks. Gardeners Weekend closes off the entire park, including childrens playground - other events only close off parts of parks. Gardeners Weekend does cause alot of damage to Kings Heath Park - we've had to replace the entire drainage system in one half of the park in the last two years due to the crunching up of the ground caused by the trucks driving across the grass. Also, one section of Kings Heath Park was closed to public access for two years, due to the damage caused by Gardeners Weekend - this section only re-opened to the public last winter.

I disagree, but then I would.

The Walkathon didn't close the park, didn't require me to pay to enter the park and didn't use public money to subsidise a business opportunity for private traders.

I like the Moseley Folk Festival and have a ticket for this year but I would be making the same complaints if it was in Kings Heath Park.

No its not, as you finally stated its c£20k from the stallholders