Holkham Hall Plant Fair

We are very lucky to have so many lovely gardens in Norfolk to visit and, despite having lived here for some years now, some of them have still to be viewed.   While on a jolly to Cromer last summer, I popped into the Tourist Information Office for a recce on places to go, and discovered that Holkham Hall were having a plant fair.  This is a garden that I haven't been to before, despite going to Holkham Beach a lot with Finn.   If I hadn't gone to Tourist Info, I'd never have found out about this plant fair, as it wasn't very well publicised at all.  Good for Mum and I though as less customers to compete with!

The plant fair was held within the walled garden, a six acre site with borders, an orchard, a vineyard and massive glasshouses.  Strictly speaking, it was a number of walled gardens within another walled garden.  We visited on a beautiful - hot, again! - day and, as usual, I had a number of trips back to my car with plants and coats too!

It was at Holkham that I discovered a love of sedum - I had no idea it came in such a range of colours?  (I had already gleaned during one of my classes at college that sedum is incredibly easy to propagate, so was on the look out for it.)

It was so hot that we had to have a few sit downs - the tea van was doing a roaring trade, but, if we go again, I think I'd be tempted to take our own food and drink, as they were very slow and over run with customers.  The plant stall holders were also doing lots of business, which we put down to the incredibly reasonable prices of everything - very well worth the money.

We heard quite a few chuckles as passersby were checking out our caged plant collection in the back of the car!

Once again, we'd bought lots of plants, few of which featured on our wish lists, but hey ho!