The BBC Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair returns to English Heritage’s stunning Audley End House and Gardens in Saffron Walden from 11-13 September. This popular annual gardening celebration attracts an audience of thousands with fresh inspiration at every turn. Highlights include Showcase Gardens and Beautiful Borders, plants and displays, tours, talks and workshops. Exciting new features include a dedicated houseplant area and craft workshops. Visitors can soak up expert advice, grow their plant knowledge, and find creative ideas for their outside spaces. It’s a great day out with delicious food and drink, live music and shopping too. Tickets include entry to Audley End House and its grounds, gardens and parkland.
At the BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine Stage, presenters Frances Tophill (Friday), Adam Frost (Saturday), Sue Kent and Ashley Edwards (both Sunday) join the Magazine team to share top tips for the cooler months to come. Topical talking points will include plants for seasonal colour, pruning and soil care, bold borders, how to create a resilient garden, and gardening for mental and physical health.
Horticultural highlights
There are three impressive Showcase Gardens to enjoy this year, each created by multi award-winning design and landscaping teams. Pip Probert from BBC 2’s Your Garden Made Perfect has designed the Little Explorers Garden, a family-friendly garden that features slides, tunnels and interactive natural areas where children can discover bugs and other wildlife. For the Love of Birds by Daisy Fenton from Kent-based Fenton Gardens is a sanctuary-style haven for wildlife and humans alike, with a central, meadow-covered hide for bird watching, reflection and meditation. This calm, contemplative space features trees, hedging, a winding stream and a wildlife pond, providing natural habitats and food for birds, insects and pollinators.
The Association of Professional Landscapers will present The Balcony Garden, a split-level design with distinct zones that creates a feeling of space and offers different views of the garden. This collaborative garden is designed by APL member designer, Paul Newman, from Designscape in Hertfordshire, and built by member companies from across Essex, Hertfordshire and Suffolk. Joining the construction teams will be two talented young landscaping apprentices from Merrist Wood College in Guildford. Ellis Thomas from Martins Garden Management and Jett Benson from Landscape Associates will work alongside skilled landscaping professionals, getting first-hand experience of a show garden build at a high-profile public event. APL members will also be sharing their expert garden planning knowledge at a free Drop-in Design and Landscaping Clinic for Autumn Fair visitors.
BBC Newsround presenter and allotment grower De-Graft Mensah and Colchester-based garden designer Lucy Chamberlain are the creative force behind the BBC Gardeners’ World Make a Metre Matter Border. Packed with planet-friendly features like winter-growing salad, tomatoes and chillies, and compost zones, the border is designed to inspire visitors to transform a metre of their own gardens to support wildlife, nature and biodiversity. Highlights include winter-growing salad leaves, tomatoes and chillies, and composting zones. The BBC Gardeners’ World Make a Metre Matter campaign supports the UK’s 30by30 target to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030. More than 16,450 campaign metres have been pledged to date, from mini ponds and vegetable plots to composting spaces and pollinator patches.
Visitors are sure to find a host of ideas amongst this year’s collection of Beautiful Borders, designed to offer inspiration for small garden spaces. With a creative theme of ‘Once Upon a Time’, these mini masterpieces are packed with imaginative design features, colour schemes and back stories. Border teams hail from Essex, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and London to Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Manchester and Derbyshire. Designs include a border that reflects lived experience of the care system, a prairie-style border celebrating the compassion of hospice volunteers, and a garden that recalls magical memories of carefree, childhood days in the garden.
The world-renowned Beth Chatto’s Plants & Gardens will be hosting drop-in seedling planting sessions and inspiring visitors with a display of climate-tolerant, sustainable planting. Always a champion for ‘growing your own’, the National Allotment Society are creating an eye-catching edible border. New for 2026 is theHouseplants Area, featuring exciting indoor plant displays in greenhouse settings.
Fabulous flora
The Autumn Fair boasts a wide selection of specialist nurseries, garden retailers and outdoor lifestyle exhibitors, and the English Heritage Plant Creche offers safe, secure plant storage for collection later. If you’re looking to expand your plant knowledge, the Autumn Fair’s Plant Experts, Lucy Chamberlain, Saul Walker and the English Heritage garden team, will be hosting informative tours of the Audley End Organic Kitchen Garden.
Feeling creative? Why not book onto one of the Autumn Fair’s workshops and make a handmade souvenir to take home. There’s dried flower wreath making with Cambridge flower grower and florist, Kim O’Brien, and fresh flower crown making with Cara Thompson, a community grower from Make It Flourish in Essex. In an exciting new collaboration for 2026, the UK’s biggest textile craft event, Knit + Stitch, joins the Autumn Fair, hosting floral-inspired craft workshops.
Gardening gossip and brilliant books
At the In Conversation Stage, award-winning garden writer, designer, presenter and filmmaker Ade Sellars (AKA The Good Life Gardener) will be discussing life in and out of the garden with a line-up of well-known gardening personalities. Guests include De-Graft Mensah, wildlife gardener Helen Hutchings, organic gardener Becky Searle and nutrition experts from Nutracheck. Award-winning garden designer and writer Andrew Jackson will be discussing his New Build Manifesto, a mission to transform new-build garden plots into wildlife-rich landscapes.
The Autumn Fair Bookshop features a collection of latest releases and gardening classics from BBC Gardeners’ World presenters including Adam Frost, Frances Tophill, Monty Don, Rachel de Thame and Carol Klein. Buy a book and head to the BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine Stage for an exclusive book signing with Adam Frost, Frances Tophill, Sue Kent and Ashley Edwards.
Tempting tastings
The Fair’s Autumn Table is the place to be for seasonal, harvest-themed food and drink inspiration. Food and drink writer and broadcaster Andy Clarke will be hosting a programme of delicious, daily tasting sessions. Explore the world of wild food with Cambridge-based Hops and Tails who will be serving a selection of foraged-inspired drinks, canapés and preserves, and sharing ways to incorporate wild ingredients into home cooking. The Audley End Kitchen Garden team will be celebrating heritage apples and pears with guided tastings, homemade fruit snacks, and the history behind these traditional varieties.
For fizz fans, there’s English sparkling wine tasting with Bishop’s Stortford based Bailey Hills Estates. Discover the vineyard’s story and production methods, then enjoy some exceptional vintages with tasting notes and food pairing ideas. At the Garden Gin Experience, East Coast Distillery in Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex will have two distinctive gins to try, with pairing and garnish tips.
At the Good Food Market, there’s a wide range of tasty street food options, bars, coffee stops and ice cream, artisan producers with tempting food and drink to taste and take home, and live music. For an elegant addition to the day, English Heritage will be serving classic afternoon tea at a vintage spot in the heart of the Fair.
Isobel Mills, Horticultural Events Manager at Immediate Live, the organisers of BBC Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair, said: “We absolutely love celebrating the mellow autumn gardening season at beautiful Audley End. Its spectacular 17th century mansion provides a stunning backdrop to the Autumn Fair and the gardens are a treat to explore, from the restored Parterre and Kitchen Garden to the sweeping ‘Capability’ Brown landscape. With so much to see, do and learn at the Fair, visitors can be sure of finding inspiration, ideas and wonderful new plants to take home.”
Louise Ellis, Head Gardener at Audley End House and Gardens, said: “We’re passionate gardeners and growers here, and love talking about plants! It’s a treat to share the efforts of our dedicated garden teams and volunteers with BBC Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair visitors. They’re always a lovely crowd and we can’t wait to welcome them along again in September.”
BBC Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair tickets are available at www.bbcgardenersworldfair.com, and include entry to Audley End’s grand mansion with its great hall, state rooms, dressing rooms, servants’ wing, stables and chapel, plus the organic walled Kitchen Garden, grounds, gardens, parklands and children’s play area. Well-behaved dogs on leads are welcome in the grounds at no extra cost. BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine subscribers enjoy discounted tickets and exclusive access to the Subscriber Club Lounge, featuring exclusive talks from special guests, extra seating and additional refreshment options. English Heritage members also enjoy discounted tickets.
Discount code
SAVE10: 10% off standard adult/concession entry tickets (not valid for 1.30pm entry, groups, English Heritage Member tickets or with any other offer), offer expires 23:59 on 28 August 2026.
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* Winners will be emailed a link to register online and will receive tickets by email. Tickets are non-refundable, non-exchangeable and non-transferable, and do not include travel, accommodation or expenses. There is no cash alternative. Details of giveaway and prize correct at time of print. Ticket terms and conditions apply https://www.immediatelive.com/ticket-terms-and-conditions/