DESCRIBED as the largest formal garden laid out in Britain since the war and one of the most important, interesting and artistic gardens of the second half of the twentieth century, The Laskett Gardens, made by Roy Strong and his wife, theatre designer Julia Trevelyan Oman, will not, says their maker, survive in their present form beyond his death.

Recently Sir Roy Strong and The Laskett have made headlines as news broke that the National Trust had rejected his offer to leave the gardens, together with a substantial endowment, to them to ensure its future. On learning that his proposal had been turned down, Sir Roy revealed that the garden would be dismantled a year after his death.

In January, Sir Roy, a recent guest on Desert Island Discs, will give the annual art lecture for Glasbury Arts, a lecture which will be based on his account of the remaking of the garden, Remaking a Garden – The Laskett Gardens transformed, a project which began in 2003, the year that his wife Julia died.

"The Laskett Gardens are unashamedly nostalgic and romantic and they are emphatically the creation of a marriage of equals... I know of no other English garden that resonates so forcefully with the lives of its two makers,” Sir Roy says in the book.

Among the elements in the garden that reflect the couple’s lives working in the arts are a Victoria & Albert Museum Temple to mark Roy's directorship and an arbour in honour of the Royal Ballet's choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton, two of whose most famous ballets Julia designed.

The lecture will be illustrated with photographs by Clive Boursnell, who has photographed the whole process from the beginning.

Sir Roy Strong: The Laskett Gardens Remade will be at Glasbury Village Hall on Saturday, January 24 from 10.30am to 11am

To book, call the box office on 07583 544110 or online at glasburyarts.co.uk. Tickets are also available from Old Forest Arts, The Craft Centre, Hay-on-Wye.