Cottesbrooke Gardeners' Fair - Gardenista
You know the feeling: You’ve just arrived at a favorite museum to see a longed-for show, but can’t resist the museum shop first. Here, guilt-free shopping is the main event, with stands by 42 nurseries–including some of Europe’s top growers–on the rolling green lawns of Cottesbrooke Hall, straight up the M1 from London. After Chelsea, Cottesbrooke is the season’s most glamorous gardening event, a cheery festival of the expert and the picturesque. Jake Hobson, back from recent adventures with Toast, will be talking about cloud pruning on each day of the fair, when he is not by his stand Niwaki, selling Japan’s sharpest accoutrements for the perfect snip. Photographs by Kendra Wilson, except where noted. Photograph by James Corbett, via Cottesbrooke. At the prettiest fair of its kind in England, the turf-topped tables show the plants to best advantage. Photograph by James Corbett. For a quick survey of the who-what-where in British horticulture, Cottesbrooke reveals a network of hard-working nursery men and women whose top-quality plants turn designers into stars. Plants and plants people are the nucleus of this fair, and specialist growers are both local and far-flung. The fair is in its fifth year and many of the specialist suppliers can see their progeny blooming in the gardens of Cottesbrooke. Big ideas at a small fair: a shepherd’s hut from Hollow Ash makes a portable summer house. Photograph by James Corbett. Vintage tools come in unfamiliar but useful shapes and sizes, from Garden and Wood. Instead of the temporary show gardens which are a vital ingredient of RHS events, visitors to Cottesbrooke can wander around the permanent yet ever-evolving gardens of the Hall. With the estimable head gardener Phylip Statner and his team, several top designers have helped to shape the look over the last few years: James Alexander-Sinclair‘s Terrace Border is tall, pretty, and sometimes prickly.