Chichele Garden Fair
our annual event for garden lovers
Chichele Garden Fair 2023
Chichele Garden Fair 2022
Something for all garden lovers in our wonderfully restored walled community at Chichele College with sales of plants, produce, honey and garden accessories to enhance your garden plus free advice from the well-known garden expert, Nicholas Warlicker.
In this special anniversary year, this event was accompanied by a premier of the Henry Chichele Exhibition in the College building and children’s artwork featuring the great man and his legacy to the town.
This is more than a Garden Fair; it offers the community a place to enjoy time spent together in a very special space where priests would have gardened in medieval times, growing herbs to include saffron and tending produce to include an orchard that in turn gifted blossom for the bees yielding honey and wax.
Our recent discovery of Bee Boles is testament to the original function of this Scheduled Monument and the power of the site to keep telling its stories. It is possibly one of the oldest walled sites still functioning as a garden for a community. Chichele College Garden is planted on a medieval theme with all planting being native or the period to include heritage fruit trees.
Now spilling over into the Duchy Barn Garden there will music, refreshments, and cocktails.
FREE ENTRY
Celebrating the Town Charters of Higham Ferrers – 2019
The Fair in 2019 provided something for all the family with children’s activities, art and heritage as well as much for the garden lover to enjoy, of course.
We were delighted to launch the Charter Exhibition to promote their importance to the town’s heritage. Higham Ferrers Tourism, Business and Community Partnership have been working in partnership with the Town Council to restore and conserve our precious Charters and raise awareness of their existence and significance to the development of Higham Ferrers. Thanks to Heritage Lottery Funding this is happening with the Charters having undergone restoration by professional conservators, and lots of exciting educational and celebratory events taking place in the town.
Local children and young people created wonderful models, drawings and paintings of castles that were displayed in the college. And once again Year 6 pupils are created Scarecrows; this year representing characters named in the 1251 Charter.
'Our Heritage' was the theme for 2018
As well as many plants and garden items for sale, the Garden Fair offered:
craft demonstration by Colemans Craft Warehouse
children’s activity – Pot decorating and planting seeds by Wyevale Garden Centre
display of Higham Ferrers through the Ages from Roman to Victorian Scarecrows by Higham Ferrers Junior School, sponsored by Waitrose.
In the College building we were delighted to:
launch the Northamptonshire Gardens Trust Humphry Repton Exhibition to celebrate the bicentenary of this great landscape gardener, who produced Red Books for Finedon Hall and Barton Hall
display art by local children – the Art Competitions were sponsored by Colemans; for younger children the theme was The Buildings of Higham Ferrers and for the Ferrers School students, A Flavour of Higham Ferrers.
Another successful day – see more >>
By Charlotte Mantle, Higham Ferrers Junior School
Garden Fair May 2017
The theme last year was walled kitchen gardens and we were proud to launch Northamptonshire Gardens Trust Walled Kitchen Garden Exhibition to be on display throughout the summer at Podington Wyevale Garden Centre.
As well as many plants and garden items for sale, the Garden Fair offered:
cookery demonstration by a MasterChef semi-finalist, Mary Hendry
craft demonstration by Colemans Craft Warehouse
display of Celebrity Chef Scarecrows by Higham Ferrers Junior School.
In the College building we were delighted to display tray gardens created by local children and art by students of the Ferrers School.
The day was a huge success – Look what you missed!
Second prize winner in art competion
In 2016 our theme was Lancelot 'Capability' Brown
Many hundreds of people enjoyed a truly community focused event, learning a little more about garden history, buying plants and produce or simply relaxing in the special atmosphere of the Chichele College Garden and savouring Capabili-Teas.
Scarecrow competition by local school