Every year at the Garden Museum Spring Plant Fair, we gather expert plant growers and specialist nurseries from around the country to sell some of the best garden plants you’ll find in London.
From shade specialists to plants for pollinators, meet the growers and pick their brains on what will flourish in your garden, balcony or allotment. New stalls at this year’s fair 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 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. Programme curated by Susanna Grant, founder of Hackney-based shade specialist plant shop Hello There Linda.
Programme
Easy annuals for a flowery summer
10.30am: Book tickets
April is a perfect time to sow some seeds and set yourself up for a flowery summer! Join Wolves Lane Flower Company for a shot of flowery inspiration and some top tips on easy wins for growing cut flowers at home, no matter how small your space.
Spring Seeds: Microgreens Cooking Demo
11am and 2pm: Book tickets
In this cooking demonstration, the Garden Museum’s Food Educator Ceri Jones will show you how to grow your own indoor microgreens using mustard seeds and dried peas. Ceri will then show you how to add them into your dishes, showcasing two seasonal veg-based dishes. Session includes tastings and a recipe card to take away, so you can recreate the dishes at home.
Kick start your garden design
11.30am: Book tickets
Often the biggest hurdle to creating a garden is knowing how – and where – to start. From making small spaces appear bigger and blurring boundaries to statement plants and sustainable hard landscaping, this talk and Q&A with garden designers Susanna Grant and Will Scholey will change the way you view your space and help you incorporate design into small urban spaces.
Starting Seeds Workshop
1.30pm: Book tickets
Often the sowing of these tiny pips gets unnecessarily overcomplicated. Let’s go over the basics of effective sourcing, seed sowing, pricking out, growing on, and saving seeds plus take home a small pot of seeded joy.
Wild Spaces
2.30pm: Book tickets
No matter how small your space, whether you own or rent, this talk will give you top tips to help nature in your outside space, led by the latest research and thinking about nature recovery and biodiversity. Esther Adelman has been working to help make space for nature in a community garden and orchard in Hackney over the last 14 years as well as helping create a green corridor along the Regents Canal to the River Lea.
Stalls (more TBA!)
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Great Dixter Nursery
Great Dixter Nursery
We are delighted to welcome Great Dixter Nursery to this year's Spring Plant Fair! The Nursery team will be bringing a selection of garden plants grown at Great Dixter's on-site nursery, a rare opportunity to buy these plants in London.
The Nursery was started by Christopher Lloyd in 1954, specialising in plants he deemed garden-worthy. We remain a small, personal and professional nursery. -
Beth Chatto's Plants & Gardens
Beth Chatto's Plants & Gardens
Beth Chatto's mantra has always been: 'Right plant; right place'. We propagate our plants from those grown in Beth's gardens, and true to her philosophy, our plants are grown in the environment that suits them best. If you know the soil conditions in your garden, you can choose from plants grouped into areas such as drought tolerant, damp and shade loving.
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Zophian Plants
Zophian Plants
Zophian Plants is a new nursery specialising in drought tolerant adaptable perennials, building up collection of low maintenance long flowering plants and experimenting with growing in sand based mediums and peat free compost.
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Moore & Moore Plants
Moore & Moore Plants
Specialising in choice, unusual, and rare plants for shady places, they also have an interesting and select collection of plants which will attract pollinators to your garden.
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Nobottle Nursery
Nobottle Nursery
A Northamptonshire nursery selling a range of herbaceous perennials, fuchsias and seasonal stocks of sweet peas, bedding plants, vegetable plants and young perennial plants.
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The Kew Plantsman
The Kew Plantsman
Professional plantsman Matthew Spratt will be selling rare and unusual perennials, shrubs, grasses, bamboo, species fuchsia and potted herbs.
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Niwaki
Niwaki
Niwaki brings the very best in Japanese design and craftsmanship, inspiring gardeners, chefs and craftsmen to do the stuff they love, even better.
We source and manufacture an extraordinary range of fine garden and woodworking tools, kitchen knives and outdoor gear, priding ourselves not only in the pleasure it brings our customers, but also the knowledge and enthusiasm we share with them.
Over the last ten years Niwaki has built up a loyal following, based ultimately around our core products: The Niwaki tripod ladder, hand forged secateurs and shears, the mighty Hori Hori, and our range of kitchen knives. -
Vegelicious of Hadleigh
Vegelicious of Hadleigh
A micro plant nursery based in Hadleigh, Suffolk. Selling seasonal bedding, vegetable plants, perennials and garden sundries.
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Harts of Lee
Harts of Lee
A husband and wife team who run a plant and flower stall at Lewisham Farmers Market, Manor House Gardens, Lee. They grow their own plants and flowers wherever possible, and for the Garden Museum Spring Plant Fair will tailor their offering with vintage garden tools and arrangements in vintage containers, as well as a selection of Tradescantia to celebrate the legacy of the Tradescants, royal gardeners whose tomb is in the Garden Museum courtyard garden.
