Pumpkin picking and Dahlias at Garsons

Autumn is for me, the most beautiful season.  Don’t get me wrong I love spring and the coming into warmer weather but there is something warming in a different way about autumn.  Falling leaves, falling conkers to be collected, crab apples underfoot and berries but to name a few lovely things. Also the peak wedding flower season is over so we have time to do more things like this!

My 3 year old has been learning at nursery about the importance of harvest and started to name his favourite vegetables.  Getting a 3 year old to eat vegetables can be challenging.  It certainly has been with Rufus.  I was keen to reinforce the teachings of the nursery and take this boy to see where vegetables come from.  Living in London we don’t have a vegetable garden.  A nursery mum happened to mention Garsons…….. a 40 minute drive down the A3 from Battersea.  

I had a quick look on their website which gives an overview of what you are able to pick at a particular time of the year.  PUMPKINS can be picked right now!  We got in the car on Saturday morning and headed to Garsons Esher.  Esher is a lovely place.  I noted the beautiful looking flower shop ‘Buds and Blooms‘ and my husband who loves food was thrilled to see a branch of the ‘Good Earth‘ one of his favourite places in Wandsworth to eat.

In no time we found ourselves at Garsons.  Rufus was shouting from the back of the car ‘Where are the pumpkins?’ We followed the signs for pick your own.  We passed buckets full of Dahlias at the side of a small wooden kiosk.  I wanted to get out straight away.  Of course right now it was all about the pumpkins.  Fortunately the next part of the winding trail took us to the pumpkin field.  We parked the car and were met by a super helpful man who explained how everything works. You pick everything and then you can pay at the end. There we could start to choose and pick the pumpkins. 

Wow! So much fun.  A very happy little boy. There he was choosing his pumpkin carefully. He didn’t want a dirty one!  We put the pumpkin into the basket got back into the car and drove round to the next stop ‘beetroot, cabbage, cauliflower and sunflowers’.  Here we picked all of them and again got back into the car.  It almost felt like we were at Longleat Safari where you drive around slowly looking at the animals but with vegetables. 

Last stop were the raspberries.  We filled a punnet full of delicious raspberries.  The raspberry stop was where the Dahlias that I had my eye on were.  Thankfully nobody had bought them all when we drove round.  Here we paid for our pumpkins, vegetables and 10 stems of the most gorgeous Dahlias. The girls here working could not have been more lovely.  

We headed to the main shop to buy some spring bulbs for planting.  We were met with one of the most amazingly stocked toy shops! This of course posed an immediate problem with Rufus wanting all of the toys in the shop, however, we did leave inspired with gifts for Christmas without having to brave the larger somewhat hectic toy retailers. We spent much more time at Garsons than we initially intended. This was no bad thing.  We had a light lunch in their lovely bright restaurant that we all enjoyed before heading back on the A3.

We arrived home with lots of lovely fruit, vegetables, a child’s prize pumpkin and matching squashes!The pumpkin is cherished by Rufus, yet at the same time we have demands to ‘make it halloween’ (not sure how well cutting this up will go down in reality), I am so in awe of the most amazing selection of British grown Dahlias and Tom (husband and Dad) can’t believe his luck with the most tasty raspberry eton mess.

Garsons, Winterdown Rd, Esher KT10 8LS