The Garden of Unearthly Delights Closes a Successful Season

The Garden of Unearthly Delights closes its 2018 season today with its most successful year yet. 2788 performances of more than 100 shows across 16 venues helped boost crowd attendances to well over 700,000, with ticket sales up 4% on 2017.

The fast-paced month saw Garden artists claim five Adelaide Fringe Awards across music, comedy, magic, dance and cabaret including Carla Lippis for the Fringe World Tour Ready Award, Djuki Mala for Excellence in Aboriginal Creative Arts, Glittery Clittery for Best Cabaret, Different Party for Best Comedy and Kevin Quantum for Best Magic.

The Directors of The Garden of Unearthly Delights attribute the success of The Garden to strong programming across the board and a continued support of open-minded and discerning audiences.

Garden Co-Director, Michelle Buxton said "We mindfully curate a space that has the capacity to host larger shows with high production values so we are also able to support new artists and smaller shows, which is where most artists start out.

"Supporting the little guys is a much a part of keeping the arts alive as it is making sure the big guys have somewhere to play."

The Garden is proud of being able to support local charities with positive outcomes, explains Michelle: "The Garden and our Community Partners raised more than $30,000 for the following local charities: Hutt Street Centre, Sammy D Foundation, Salvation Army, Oxfam, Little Heroes Foundation and Muscular Dystrophy SA.

"Our sincere thanks to everyone who generously supported these important causes."

The inaugural Green Thumb Award goes to Adelaide-born master of the absurd Sam Simmons who has performed in The Garden for 12 years, going from a tiny venue to now selling out one of the largest theatres on the site.

This season The Garden worked with Amongst It SA - an experiment in connecting individuals to everyday nature - on Artificial Intelligence software that helps one of the park's oldest and most beautiful trees speak with Garden-goers. Across the season over 25,000 people have text conversations with Dora the lemon-scented gum.

The Garden of Unearthly Delights will be back in 2019 from 14 Feb to 17 Mar.

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