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RHS Grow Your Own Weekend
- 03 January 2013
As part of Grow Your Own Weekend on 23 and 24 March, RHS Gardens Wisley, Harlow Carr, Hyde Hall and Rosemoor will be welcoming visitors to a series of events, tastings and demonstrations, aimed at anyone interested in growing and cooking their own food. Whether you have a window box, a front lawn, a smallholding, an allotment or just a vase that needs filling – there will be something taking place at an RHS garden that is right for you.
The RHS gardeners and a wide variety of experts will be on hand to offer advice and give practical demonstrations throughout the weekend. There will also be plenty of activities aimed at foodie gardeners and smallholders with creative cookery tips, tastings, advice on animal husbandry and many specialist growers and producers coming along to give tips and get visitors inspired. The programme is pitched at all levels with events suitable for everyone from complete beginners and children to seasoned pros.
What's on in the four RHS Gardens
RHS Garden Wisley (Surrey)
The Wisley gardeners will be demonstrating how to sow crops now for best results in summer, successful fruit and herb combinations that can be grown in pots on balconies or patios and giving a seedling-to-tree guide to apple growing with tips on grafting, planting and pruning. Experts from the Cottage Garden Society and Surrey Beekeepers Association as well as fruit and veg experts from the RHS will be on hand to answer queries.
Other activities include family friendly demonstrations of sowing and growing leek seeds, book signings and a spring plant fair with quality plants from around 30 specialist nurseries available to buy.
RHS Garden Harlow Carr (North Yorkshire)
The Grow Your Own events at Harlow Carr are designed to help visitors discover the joys of growing their own fruit and veg, no matter what size of plot they have or their level of experience as well as how to get the most out of their seasonal produce.
Top, local chef and restaurant owner Lionel Strub will be hosting outside cookery demos using fresh produce from the kitchen garden. There will also be a host of information and advice available for those interested in creating their own small holding, be it for meat, milk or eggs, with live animals and experts onsite. There will also be the opportunity to sample a range of food from local producers.
RHS Garden Rosemoor (Devon)
If flowers are your thing then head to Rosemoor where gardeners will be treated to flower seed sowing demonstrations. Gardeners who are more interested in edible crops may want to join one of the guided walks around the Rosemoor fruit and vegetable garden which takes in short demonstrations of the various tasks every green fingered enthusiast needs to master including composting, digging, sowing and more.
There will also be cookery demonstrations and, weather permitting, local smallholders will be bringing along live animals as well as giving informal talks and advice.
RHS Garden Hyde Hall (Essex)
Vegetable fans will be in for a treat at Harlow Carr with a display of giant veg from the growers at the Essex branch of the National Vegetable Society planned. Those who prefer eating to growing will also get their chance to take home a colossal cabbage or an outsized onion when the display is raffled off at the end of the weekend's festivities. Down at the Hyde Hall vegetable plots experts will be on hand to give tips to both the wary and the expert grower.
And finally, for those who want an edible souvenir to take home, growers, beekeepers, bakers and farmers will be setting up stalls at the local produce market selling jams, ciders, cakes, local honey and plenty more goodies.
Source: RHS - RHS Grow Your Own Weekend
