The Body in the Garden Festival Open this Friday 25 October at Adelaide Botanic Garden

The inaugural 'The Body in the Garden', a crime and garden writers' festival, will be held in the Adelaide Botanic Garden this weekend.

Crime and garden writing are amongst the most popular genres in publishing today and this quirky new festival features a mix of around 20 Australian and international writers on these topics.

The festival follows the tradition of South Australia being an innovator and leader in the area of festival events. Like the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, the Body in the Garden will be the first festival of its kind in Australia - and probably in the world.

The festival's opening session, will be held at Elder Hall on Friday 25 October at 7.30 pm. The session, which is entitled 'Burying the body: Compost or a crime?' introduces the four international guests participating in the festival to Adelaide audiences; Toby Musgrave, one of the UK's leading authorities in garden history and design; Ann Cleeves, whose Vera Stanhope series, set in the north of England, was recently screened on Australian television; Hakan Nesser, winner of the European Crime Fiction Star Award and three-time winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award and British garden writer Charles Elliott.

Tickets for this session are $25.00 and may be purchased through all BASS outlets. This is the only ticketed session in the otherwise free festival program which take place on 26 and 27 October.

The program for the festival is available online at www.thebodyinthgardenfestival.com.au

The organisers of the festival, Rose Wight OAM (long-time executive producer Adelaide Writers Week, Festival of Ideas) and Penelope Curtin, (arts administrator, bookshop owner, director South Australian Food and Wine Writers' Festival and freelance editor) said, 'Adelaide, the ideal festival city because of its convenience and compact size, also boasts one of the oldest botanic gardens in Australia - an idyllic and apt location for this festival.'