Toby Buckland's Garden Festival preview in Exeter City Centre

Toby Buckland’s Garden Festival, which takes place on 29 & 30 April at Powderham Castle is aiming to create a little green oasis with trees and colourful Spring flowers in the centre of Princesshay Shopping Centre in Exeter in this Visit England ‘Year of the English Garden’.

Toby will be offering gardening advice and running a plant-problem surgery from his pop-up potting shed in the central square in an urban jungle of fantastic trees and plants created by Matford boys, Sam and Lee of Urban and Rural Plants.

This Bank Holiday at the festival, Toby will be talking about ‘Big Ideas for Small Spaces’ and he has lots of tips and suggestions for town and city gardens. Whether you have a window box, a shady wall, or runaway weeds, Toby can offer horticultural solutions.

His wife Lisa will be selling glorious Spring plants and flowers from their boutique Plant Centre. 

“I thought it would be great to celebrate this Year of the English Garden,” says Toby, “and to give the people of Exeter a taste of the gardening fun to be had at my festival which takes place later in April.”

The Good Flower Company will add a vivid splash of colour with fresh British cut-flowers from the Westcountry, ‘grown not flown’, plus we will have a bit of sizzle and steam with a demonstration of outdoor cooking from Hearth & Cook who are bringing a ‘Morsø Grill Forno’ outdoor oven which can provide cosy warmth, crispy pizza, succulent steaks and can even be used as a smoker.

And don’t miss the seed giveaway by RAMM who are promoting their programme of Naturally Inspired exhibitions and activities, part of which will be a pop-up garden created by Toby in the inside Museum.

Andrew Littlejohns, Princesshay Operations Manager said: “We are very pleased to host Toby and his team here in Princesshay ahead of his Garden Festival at the end of April. I’m sure Toby will inspire us all to get green, from creating window boxes to transforming gardens.”

Toby Buckland, Festival MC, whose ambitions are to sail a garden shed down the River Exe and to inspire everyone to get gardening. Along the way he has progressed from picking olives for the Greek Communist party to running his own nursery and presenting numerous TV shows, including BBC Gardeners’ World and soon to be seen back on our screens covering RHS Chelsea Flowershow.

His first festival took place at Powderham Castle in 2014 to popular acclaim and is now a premier gardening event in the Southwest returning for a third year as an annual festival.

The 2016 speaker programme includes: Toby Buckland, Joe Swift, Christine Walkden, Jim Buttress and many more.