Open Days – straight after the Royal Wedding

It seems the whole world’s excited about tomorrow’s Royal Wedding, and it’s infectious. Customers have been ordering Papavar orientale  ‘Royal Wedding‘ …

Papaver Orientale 'Royal Wedding'

..and Myrtle, ‘herb of love’, a sprig of which makes a traditional appearance in the Royal Wedding bouquet. This tradition goes back to the time of Queen Victoria, who planted a sprig of Myrtle from her wedding bouquet in her private garden – and it’s still growing there today!

Myrtus communis - Myrtle

We’re excited too, and it’s not just Royal Wedding Fever – we’ve got Open Days again, starting Saturday 30th April until Bank Holiday Monday May 2nd. Because we’re mostly an online business, we love Open Days because we can spend all day talking herbs – our passion – with our herb-loving customers.

We’re nearly ready now – the Berry Blue Creative Foods marquee went up this morning, so our visitors  can partake of delicious, seasonal, locally grown food  and relax during bouts of herb-shopping amongst our 650+ organically grown varieties.

Berry Blue marquee going up in the sunshine

Luscious, leafy, flowery herbs for Open Days

…and the herbs are looking luscious, leafy and some are even flowery – just in time for our Open Days!

Angelica Archangelica for Chelsea Flower Show

We're growing this Angelica Archangelica for Bunny Guinness, for the M&G Garden at Chelsea

As well as our retail ‘booth’ at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year, we’re  growing our beautiful, organic herbs especially for 3 top show gardens: the M&G Investment Garden by Bunny Guinness, the B&Q garden by Patrick Collins and the Skyshades Garden by Marney Hall.

Recent unseasonably sunny weather has brought all of our herbs into beautiful bud and flower – we’re taking extra special care with the show herbs to ensure they’re still looking amazingly beautiful and totally tip top for Chelsea. This involves much hand watering, foliar feeding, and manually moving the plants so that they get the requisite amount of light and shade.

Hot work. But, as you can see, worth the effort.

Herb Farm Open Days -Sat 30th Apr, Sun 1st & (BH)Mon 2nd April

We’ve already had our first Open Days of 2011 – we were busier than ever – infact, on the first day our carpark was full by five past ten…and we don’t open until 10am! Jekka’s pre-bookable workshop on Growing Herbs from Seed sold out 3 weeks before the event. The free farm tour became a free farm talk instead, because the group was so big!

Our first Herb Farm Open Days of 2011 were SO busy! Do come along to the next ones:
Saturday April 30th, Sunday May 1st and Bank Holiday Monday May 2nd, 10 – 4.

Our Salad Herbs proved a firm favourite.

Jekka’s FREE farm tour became so huge that Jekka had to do a talk instead to make herself heard!

…and Berry Blue’s Bistro & Set Menu offerings went down a treat – especially the Beef in Guinness with Parsley mash, which warmed everyone up.

Thank you to everyone who came along. We hope you found exactly the herbs you were looking for, and that you’ll come back again for our next Open Days from Saturday 30th April to (bank holiday)Monday 2nd May,to browse and buy, have a sniff and a taste of our 650+ herb varieties – due to latent summer-like weather, there will be even more herb varieties on sale, as they’re growing like wild rocket at the moment! Tickets for Jekka’s (pre-bookable)midday herb workshop on ‘How to Combine Herbs in Pots and Windox Boxes‘ are already selling thick and fast so don’t delay in booking your ticket as spaces are limited.

Summer arrived last weekend but what happened to spring?

Now, there are not enough hours in the day, even with the wonderfully long evenings. Summer has arrived with a sudden brilliant burst of warm sunshine – 20deg C here on the farm last weekend! Everything burst into leaf and bud, and it’s such a joy to see all our herbs greening up and bursting forth..
..but a bit of spring weather in the interim would have been very well appreciated by our hard working waterers and our herbs, some of which are now flowering beautifully, if a little prematurely!