Autumn Country Market at Easton Walled Gardens
by Patricia Montgomery, LincsMag Writer.
Date: 12 October 2011
Based in the beautiful ancient stableyard, The Autumn Country Market at Easton Walled Gardens this September, was a great event for getting quality plants and scrumptious good local food. This year the market has expanded to include vintage stalls and lots to do for children as the organisers worked hard at making it a great quality family day out.
The day started at 0800 with stall holders busily getting their crafts/products to their allocated stall, luckily for Easton Walled Gardens the weather was a breezy autumn morning and the winds that they had the previous day had died down. Everyone pulled together and everything went without a hitch for them to open to the public at 11:00am
In its 12 acres of gardens with a really sensible, ‘keep on the grass’ policy, children could explore the yew tunnel, the turf maze, try to find fairies in the gardens or have a swing on the big seat under the Cedar trees.
At the market there was face painting and ceramic painting. For parents and adults, the gardens looked beautiful in September with late summer borders and annuals at their best.
Planting Questions
Visitors were able to pick up some local food, vintage finds or plants from well-known local producers as well as first time stallholders to the fair. Plant stallholders offered excellent advice but if you felt that you needed to know more, then a gardening clinic offered advice to amateur and more advanced gardeners.
Laetitia Maklouf, presenter on Alan Titchmarsh’s new show ‘Love your garden’ and author of ‘The Virgin Gardener’ joined the panel to take visitors questions alongside Ursula Cholmeley, owner of the gardens and Lucy Dawes, who runs vegetable and cutflower courses for beginners.
This year a Vintage section was included and stalls were placed within their newly renovated Coach House function room decorated with fabric bunting and flowers. Vintage stalls included Antiques, knitting yarns and darns, vintage home and garden wares, patchwork quilts and bags, and sock dolls.
Inside their rustic stable block also decorated with fabric bunting, they had local craft people selling jewellery, glass, felting fashion accessories, monogrammed presents, fabric memo boards, ceramics, mosaic mirrors, dolls houses and stain glass items.
Local produce with beef, oil, cordial were situated within their quaint courtyard that separated the two buildings, and plant stalls aligned the main path into the gardens.
The tea room were kept very busy serving light lunches, homemade cake and plenty pots of tea served whilst people sat and relaxed overlooking The Pickery and listening to the beautiful harp music played by Eleanor Turner and her students.
