Woodbridge, Suffolk -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/27/2012 --The Wise Words Festival took place on the weekend of 8th September, encouraging the community to be inspired by literature. Pop-up libraries were created using the wheelbarrows provided by Notcutts and were placed in and amongst four Canterbury parks.

Nature has inspired many wise words and encouraged captivating storytelling, and this bond is something that both Notcutts and Sarah Salway, the current Canterbury Laureate feel very strongly about.

Notcutts, who have 19 individual garden centres situated across the country, passionately believe that gardens can play a key role in the happiness of a community. The garden centre chain’s ‘Bookbarrows’ for the Wise Words Festival offered an insight into the relationship between the written word and nature to the Canterbury community.

Jessie Richardson, Notcutts’ Website Marketing Manager, commented: “We are very proud to be sponsoring this event and offering our support to the Canterbury community. Not only will the wheelbarrows that we have provided become a space where people can share their enthusiasm for literature, they will also go on to be used by gardening charities.”

Wise Words celebrates and explores the words that have shaped many views by bringing the community, authors, poets, dancers, digital, performance and visual artists together. The festival was a tremendous success with many people encouraged to put down their modern reading devices and reconnect with paper books and the spoken word.

In attendance was Olympic poet, Lemn Sissay, and Subhadassi, an award-winning writer and experienced renga master, also attracted an impressive crowd. It was a great weekend for poetry, books and gardens, encouraging the community to pick up a book and offering a stage for poets and storytellers to interact with a new audience.

Canterbury Laureate, Sarah Salway was delighted with how the festival went and not least with the unique mobile libraries that Notcutts were able to provide. “The ‘bookbarrows’ were a real focus over the weekend, with people picking out books they wanted to read but also talking to their friends about the books they'd enjoyed. It added to the spirit of generosity that was at the centre of Wise Words, and certainly helped bring literature right on to the streets.”

The wheelbarrows will be used until the Canterbury Festival in October where they will again be recycled as pop-up libraries, before being donated to a local gardening charity after the event.