By ANDREW YOUNG,

Entertainments Editor

THE balloon goes up from the Kibble Palace in Glasgow's Botanic

Gardens on Monday for the launch of the biggest summer party on British

television. For the following seven weeks, The Garden Party, a daily

lunchtime magazine programme will be co-presented on the BBC1 network by

Caron Keating, Jan Leeming, Eamonn Holmes, and Paul Coia.

The party is a continuation of the one that took place last year at

the Glasgow Garden Festival. Producer David Martin said: ''This is a

transplant which could become a perennial. With Glasgow about to become

Europe's city of culture, it seemed like a party which was worth

carrying on.''

During the garden festival, the programme, which was a sequel to

Pebble Mill at One, attracted UK audiences of four million. The menu

will be the same as before -- ''a mix of conversation, music, cookery,

fashion, gardening and sport''.

BBC Scotland has spent nearly #12,000 in refurbishing the palace and

in making the old Botanic Gardens railway station a suitable venue for

live pop music presented by Richard Jobson. It was 110 years ago that

John Kibble floated the palace up the Clyde from his home in

Helensburgh. Disraeli and Gladstone both delivered their rectorial

addresses in it when honoured by Glasgow University.

The hot air balloon will be launched on Monday, just over 200 years

after the first one piloted by Vincent Lunardi went up from the city's

St Andrew's church yard. It has the registration number G-G-G-GOW and

will be used to publicise Glasgow as 1990 City of Culture.