Garden Museum Spring Plant Fair 2024
The Garden Museum’s annual Spring Plant Fair returns on Sunday 13 April, gathering specialist plant nurseries and growers from around the country for a day of plant shopping, talks and workshops for city gardeners. Stalls will include Great Dixter Nursery and Beth Chatto’s Plants & Gardens, providing a rare opportunity for Londoners to shop garden plants grown by these beloved and historic nurseries.
This popular plant fair has been held at the Garden Museum for over forty years, celebrating the arrival of spring and the start of the gardening calendar. From shade specialists to plants for pollinators, meet the growers and pick their brains on what will flourish in your garden, balcony or allotment. Further stalls will include specialist growers such as Moore & Moore Plants, The Kew Plantsman, Zophian Plants, Benton irises from Vegelicious of Hadleigh and Friends of Arnold Circus.
This year’s fair will also feature a programme of talks and workshops on growing flowery annuals, seed sowing and increasing wildlife and biodiversity in small spaces, as well as a cookery demo and tasting in our studio kitchen.
Curated with garden designer Susanna Grant, founder of Hackney-based shade specialist plant shop Hello There Linda. Supported using public funding from Arts Council England.
Stalls
Great Dixter Nursery, Beth Chatto's Plants & Gardens, Vegelicious of Hadleigh & Benton Irises, Moore & Moore, Zophian Plants, Leahurst Nursery, Bright Green Fox, Cally Gardens, Edimentals, Glendon Nursery, Hardy's Plants, Harts of Lee, Garden & Wood, Kew Plantsman, Niwaki, Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses, Friends of Arnold Circus, Plant Heritage
Programme
Unlocking the Power of Youth-led Nature Recovery
10am-10.45am
Across the UK, young people are refusing to accept a future where large-scale nature-loss remains unchecked. Now is our opportunity to learn from, be inspired by, and, most importantly, include young people in the drive towards a regenerative future. This session will talk you through the benefits of teaming up with young people for undertaking nature recovery work, how you can do it on sites you own or manage, and upcoming future opportunities. Facilitated by Youngwilders – a youth-led non-profit accelerating UK nature recovery and involving young people in the process and movement.
A World of Sweet Peas
11am-11.30am
Join renowned UK Sweet Pea breeder and grower Phil Johnson, and Swedish Sweet Pea authority Cecilia Wingard, who have combined their abundant bouquet of knowledge, to create a new 240-page floral bible, A World of Sweet Peas, which is bursting with fascinating information on why this annual scent sensation, has become so beloved and cultivated around the globe.
Becoming Kin
11.45am-12.30pm
Join Sui Searle gardener and the founder of @decolonisethegarden, and Shama Khanna a London-based artist, educator and garden designer who grows, as they discuss how gardening might help to connect us to a sense of place, to ourselves, to each other and to our more-than-human kin.
Fruity Walks
12.15pm, 2.30pm
Urban fruit tree forager Divya Hariramani will be taking small groups on a journey around Lambeth to showcase the urban fruit trees you might have missed, the stories behind how they arrived and the people who planted them.
Power in the Land
1pm-1.45pm
Food grower and writer Claire Ratinon talks – and answers questions – about organising around workers’ rights as a member of Solidarity Across Land Trades (SALT) which is a grassroots trade union fighting for better standards of pay, working conditions and cultures for those in land-related trades. Whether you are a volunteer, gardener, grower or landscape architect, this is an informal space for anyone involved in gardening to find out more.
Setting Up a Micro Nursery
2pm-2.45pm
Hannah Fox worked at the esteemed Marchants Hardy Plants for 10 years, primarily as a propagator/gardener but ended up running the business. Hannah has now set up her own micro-nursery, Bright Green Fox, from her own garden, using every bit of space she has available. During this talk, Hannah will share her tips for making the most of a limited space, being choosy with plants, getting the right kit and keeping track of it all, with a few propagation techniques thrown in along the way.
Public Planting and How to do it Better
3pm-3.45pm
After setting up his own nursery Zophian Plants four years ago and frustrated by the often limited plant palette for drought free planting, Toby Shuall has been researching, through trial-and-error, plant species that provide food and habitat for wildlife, are drought tolerant, hardy and look great. His focus is on exploring different low intervention ways – working with sand and aggregates – to create low maintenance, high impact plantings. This is an essential talk for anyone interested in greening cities, low intervention gardening for wildlife or a south-facing garden they don’t know how to plant.