Toby Buckland’s Garden Festival set for lift off

Toby Buckland’s Garden Festival returns to Powderham Castle with some of the country’s best plant specialists, gardening stars and plenty of delicious local food, craft, live music and fun.

Gardens come in all sizes and whether you have an acre or a window box, a bare square of earth or a shady spot, you can grow a beautiful garden. Let your creativity take root at Toby Buckland’s Garden Festival at Powderham Castle and soak up inspiration from amazing and colourful nurseries, demonstrations and gardening experts. Nowhere else in the South West can you find such diversity of horticultural riches brought together for your enjoyment in such a friendly, festive atmosphere.

Toby Buckland, Festival MC, whose ambitions are to sail a garden shed down the River Exe and to inspire everyone to get gardening. Along the way he has progressed from picking olives for the Greek Communist party to running his own nursery and presenting numerous TV shows, including BBC Gardeners’ World and soon to be seen back on our screens covering RHS Chelsea Flowershow.

This year, at the festival, Toby will be talking about ‘Big Ideas for Small Spaces’. Plants are key, especially mini-me trees, shrubs and flowers bred to brighten and not out-grow smaller areas. Where space is at premium less is always more and instead of cramming borders, the art is in choosing plants that flower or look good through three or even four seasons. “Creating colour and diversity is made easy with so many glorious plants and on-the-ground advice on offer at my festival.”

Toby will be joined on the main stage by Joe Swift, who’ll be giving us 25 Garden Design Ideas in 25 Minutes, a high speed lesson in inspirational garden design. Christine Walkden believes there’s no excuse for not growing, “lazy-itis”, she calls it in her forthright manner and will be galvanizing us to get into the garden. Toby and Jim Buttress will be chatting about Jim’s remarkable life in gardening from his encounters with Royal corgis to judging the Bahrain Flower Show. Finishing each day, with three for the price of one, will be our well-loved Gardening Celebrity Q&A’s.

This year, the Earl of Devon, Charlie Courtenay, whose family seat is at Powderham Castle, and garden historian Caradoc Doy will be presenting a talk on the history of the Powderham gardens as part of the festival.

“Caradoc and I," says the Earl of Devon, “will be discussing the history of the Powderham gardens from the English Civil War through to the present day. We will give particular emphasis to the landscape gardening, including our Deer Park, which is home to a herd of approximately 600 fallow deer, and the Woodland Garden, consisting of the American Garden, Grotto, Belvedere and Walled Garden.

"I will be discussing the extensive re-development of the gardens through the ages, while Caradoc will provide an insight into the plants and specimen trees themselves and how they reflect the different ages in which they were planted.”

Deep within the Castle behind the baize door, down stone steps is the Victorian Kitchen, and it is here where many magnificent meals have been created for the Earls of Devon and their guests. During the Garden Festival we hold a series of “Kitchen Cuttings” talks in this historic space on wide ranging subjects including Devon’s First Tea Plantation, Big Ideas for Small Berries, Creating a Wild Life Friendly Garden, Ten Top Tips for Growing Chillies, Perfecting your Compost, Atlantic Botanic with Plants for Unusual Gardens, Secret History of Trees, You Too Can Grow your Own Olives, Growing Up in an African Garden and learning about the famous Veitch nursery family from the Curator of Ethnography at Royal Albert Memorial Museum.

With its fabulous climate and wide ranging topography, it is no co-incidence that the South West holds more National Plant Collections than any other area. It has been at the vanguard of plant hunting and exploration for hundreds of years and can still boast many very fine nurseries offering a wide diversity of plants.

At Powderham you can benefit from the encyclopedic knowledge of such nurserymen and women. To name a few: Thornhayes grow superb trees and are celebrating their 25th anniversary in 2016, Pounsley for old fashioned roses and cottage garden plants, Millwood Plants for shady gardens, Hardys sell beautiful perennials grown outdoors in peat-free compost ready to plant. Arouse your senses with the scent of Whetman Pinks, marvel at magnificent tree peonys and take to the trees with arboricultural surgeons Teign Trees. And this year Growers Organics from Yealmpton are bringing along organically grown vegetable plants, everything from artichokes and aubergines to tomatoes, chard and chillies with lots more to explore.

Sponsor of Toby Buckland’s Garden Festival, award-winning house builder Redrow (West Country) will be giving some lucky festival-goers a chance to enjoy a birds eye view of the festival, as visitors take to the skies for a tethered ride in their big, red hot air balloon (weather permitting).

New for 2016 is Toby’s Tea Tent, run by Tamar Grow Local and serving Plymouth Tea and super delicious home made cakes like coffee, chocolate, carrot and ginger, saffron buns and and locally produced soft drinks and cordials. Relax between plant hunting forays in our friendly, flower filled tea tent. Or choose superb food offerings from the many exhibitors serving all sorts from traditional pasties and pies to exotic curries and tasty vegetarian dishes.

Want to make more of your garden this year and have some BBQ fun? The garden festival will see several exciting demonstrations showcasing interesting ways to cook over fire outdoors, with some unique seafood, meat and vegetarian dishes being created before your very eyes by the transatlantic team up of John Gower, from Quiet Waters in North Devon and Laurence Mate from Champagne Illinois, friends and outdoor cooking addicts sharing their skills and enthusiasm. Hearth and Cook too will be showcasing their stylish Morso outdoor stoves with some sizzling recipes from BBQ experts.

For further details visit www.tobygardenfest.co.uk