91Èȱ¬

The series where people recall their presence at a major moment. They can say, I was there. This episode goes back 30 years to a summer that brought more than two million visitors to a Welsh valley as the National Garden Festival came to Ebbw Vale in 1992.

The National Garden Festival Scheme had been introduced to Britain the previous decade by the Conservative government, in an attempt to regenerate communities devastated by industrial decline. In 1986 Blaenau Gwent had bid against 19 Welsh local authorities – including Swansea and Cardiff – to bring the festival to the site of Ebbw Vale’s derelict steel works. Six years of transforming a scarred landscape followed, as slag heaps made way for thousands of flowers, trees and shrubs and attractions ranging from the Sky Shuttle to an iconic giant clock.

Ebbw Vale would be the fourth and final British garden festival – and the most successful, running for seven months and drawing more than two million people through its gates - from pensioners and pop stars to practically every school child in Wales.

Presenter Mai Davies reunites four people who all had a significant role to play: Lyn Powell was the Executive Director and then the Chief Executive of the Garden Festival through its bid and design stages, later becoming chair of the Friends of the Festival; Linda Mitchell presented Summer Scene – the network TV show broadcast live from the festival that brought celebrities to the site every week; David Cartwright was a press officer, part of a young and enthusiastic workforce drawn from Wales and beyond and Angharad Collins was quite literally the face of the garden festival. As a 16-year-old she was mascot Gryff, working the whole summer in full costume.