Beaulieu is excited to welcome back the
Returning to the grounds and gardens of Beaulieu, home of the National Motor Museum and Palace House, for its second year, the BBC Gardeners’ World Spring Fair will be full of spring garden inspiration. Visitors will be able to buy plants and gardening kit, get garden ideas and advice, taste and buy food and drink, be entertained and explore the Beaulieu attraction. Hillier, headline Fair partner, presents the Hillier Experience, with a large garden feature, advice and shop. The garden will be a design of two halves to highlight a contemporary garden with an outdoor living focus, alongside a traditional cottage garden with kaleidoscopic herbaceous border and Gertrude Jekyll inspired planting. Experts from the Hillier team will be offering tips and advice to visitors, while a large retail section will provide an opportunity to buy plants featured within the garden design. There will also be the chance to buy the newly launched Forsythia x intermedia ‘Discovery’ JOHN MITCHELL that has been added to the Hillier collection this year. Visitors will be able to drop in at the BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine Stage where the editors host a line-up of special guests, including Adam Frost on Friday, Joe Swift on Saturday, Frances Tophill on Sunday and Gardeners’ Question Time panellist Matt Biggs each day. New this year, expert talks will take place twice daily in the vegetable garden at Beaulieu. A riot of colour will be found in the displays of up to thirty specialist nurseries, all with quality plants to buy. Award-winning nurseries from the local area, New Forest Hostas and Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants, return, while Hampshire Carnivorous and LV Bespoke, Green Jjam, WS Lockyear and Pheasant Acre Plants join the Fair for time first time this year. In addition, visitors will be able to browse and buy from a range of garden exhibitors from Stihl tools to boutique brands such as Made By Alpacas’ natural fertilisers and Little Allotment Company kits. Helping visitors shop to their hearts’ content, Maggie’s Cancer Care support the Plant Crèche. Longstock Park Landscapes presents a garden inspired by the Test Way, a 44-mile long footpath which follows a disused railway line along the river Test, passing through the Leckford Estate. Sustainability and putting nature first are focus points, with reclaimed materials from the old railway line and areas including a wildflower meadow and pond to attract wildlife and insects to the garden. Master grower Jon Wheatley returns, this year with ‘The Working Garden’, showing how even small plots can be doubly productive, with a home office surrounded with beds of home-grown veg. In addition, automotive sponsor Lexus presents a vertical garden feature of plants for wellness. The Beautiful Borders return with a ‘Down Your Way’ theme inspired by the popular BBC Radio programme, packed with planting and design ideas. ‘Best Border 2021’ winners, Fairweather’s Garden Centre, return with a Wurzel Gummidge inspired design. A further eight Borders include Ann Stow’s inspired by the burble of chalk streams, watercress and the steam powered Watercress Line in Alresford, and Christine Mulinder’s design which takes Undershaw, the home of Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, as its inspiration. Visitors can book into new Plant Expert Tours at the Fair, to explore highlights of Beaulieu’s Victorian floral and kitchen gardens with experts Lucy Chamberlain and Saul Walker, plus Beaulieu head gardener Kelvin Yapp and his team. Adding to the atmosphere of this great day out, visitors can explore the BBC Good Food Market and street food area, full of food and drink to taste and buy, and be entertained at the bandstand hosted by BBC TV presenter Chris Bavin. All tickets include entry to the Beaulieu attraction and, as a celebration of the National Motor Museum’s 50th year in 2022, a charming 1928 Austin Twelve Clifton will be dressed for the event, overflowing with plants and flowers. Find out more and buy your tickets here.
