Spadework is for charity and has Pumpkin picking by day and by night we love this. Dog friendly too

For four weeks of the year in October, our Pumpkin Garden is a must visit - Choose your own pumpkin – for cooking, eating or carving – and have some fun finding your favourite. We host evening events, where you can choose your pumpkin by torchlight.

The Pumpkin Garden is, however, a hive of activity from March all the way through to November.

Our Trainees plant pumpkin seeds in March. We usually grow around 50 varieties, from wonderful tasters like the Crown Prince to the weird looking, like the Warty Goblin. We have learned a lot about pumpkins since we started our Pumpkin Garden in 2017. Every year can be different in terms of our crop, influenced of course by the weather.

Now the Garden is 2500sq. metres, we usually get some help from the farm next door to prepare the ground for planting. We often have corporate volunteers who help too, as getting the plants in the ground is a big time-sensitive project.

Once the plants are in the ground we water and weed and keep an eye on their progress, delighting in how the pumpkins grow every day. The Garden is a therapeutic space for many of our Trainees.

Once the pumpkins are ready to harvest it’s all go. We harvest them ourselves. Our Trainees have learned how best to leave the stalk and other things to ensure our pumpkins are at their best.

Each October, we welcome thousands of visitors.

Spadework Pumpkins have a purpose.

They are an on-going horticultural project for our Trainees and they bring our community together. They are also one of our biggest fund-raisers.

The money we make from pumpkins is invested back in our charity.

If there are any pumpkins left over in November, we distribute them to organisations like City Harvest that support families in need and to local farms and animal rescue centres. None of our pumpkins go to waste.