London Charity Potato Fair and Seed Exchange

Trentham Gardens, the U.K’s biggest garden restoration project, will be in full flourish this year with some new bright additions, special tours and and events throughout the year.

Highly commended in the Heritage and Conservation category of the Landscape Institute Awards, Trentham will be building on its success with even more areas of interest including a new Hornbeam maze.

Tom Stuart-Smith’s new designs of Charles Barry’s famous Italian Parterre will be a flood with over 100,000 tulips and other bulbs in advance of one of the country’s largest collections of Bearded Iris which with an evocative range of trendy perennials, including Echinacea ‘Rubinglow’ Veronicastrum ‘Fascination’ and Amonsia tab.var.salicifolia, will blossom late into the season.

Piet Oudolf’s Eastern Pleasure Ground has been completed with the addition of a further 17,000 plants bringing the number of perennials to well over 60,000.

The new interactive spiral hornbeam maze will be open for Easter and will enable guests to navigate their way through an elaborate swirling pathway to reach a tall grass viewing mound.

You will also find the UK’s only Barefoot Walk at Trentham. Guests can “free” their feet from the winter shackles of shoes and socks for a wonderful sensory spring stroll across 24 terrains and textures.

One of the main aims of Trentham is to maintain and enhance the woodland community in its care. You will find a variety of wildlife here which includes badgers, voles, hares and foxes and a herd of black fallow dear plus one of the biggest heronies in the country.

One of only four in Europe, the Monkey Forest is a totally different and exhilarating walk-through wildlife experience that transports guests into the heart of the ‘freerange’ home of 140 Barbary Macaques.

The Trentham Shopping Village now has over 60 shops and there is an award-winning Garden Centre, with a great range of indoor and outdoor living plants. From Easter the new 120-bed Premier Inn will be opening, allowing guests to stay overnight to fully take advantage of all that Trentham has to offer.

Included in the packed programme of events for 2006 is the Sensory Easter Egg Hunt from 21st to 14th March and the Little Ferns Club Wishing Tree Workshop on Sunday 23rd March. Another Spring attraction will be the great garden weekend from May 24th to 26th.

For more information about the activities and pleasures that Trentham can offer, opening times and prices log onto: www.trentham.co.uk

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