About The Garden Festival
The Garden Festival is an exciting, new, community-led festival
which takes place across 26 venues in and around Winchester. It
embraces everything that is very broadly linked to gardens and
horticulture. More than just open gardens, there is music in
gardens, art and sculpture in gardens, well-being in gardens,
poetry, readings, foraging, talks, plays, workshops, sustainability,
allotment and market gardening, herbal medicine, wine-linked events
and more. This year, the festival has spread to include the small
towns and villages of Stockbridge, Sparsholt, Tichborne, East
Tytherley, Norton, Medstead, Farringdon and Whitchurch, as well as
having many venues in Winchester city centre.
Initially called The Winchester & District Garden Festival, it
started in 2025 and the concept with its broad theme and great
variety of events proved immediately popular. Involving over 100
organisations, businesses and individuals, it is a festival almost
entirely organised by volunteers for the benefit of all the
community and the visitors to our lovely region.
Our aim
The aim of The Garden Festival is to bring as many organisations
together as possible through a shared enjoyment of everything that
is very broadly linked to gardens, horticulture, the outdoors,
well-being and nature. Working collectively as one big community,
forming new partnerships and alliances, sharing ideas and promoting
each other gives us the potential to reach out to far greater
audiences than we could achieve individually.
The Garden Festival nurtures all these relationships to support and
care about each other and to create an exciting, unique and eclectic
festival that everyone will want to come and be a part of.
Festival organisers
The Garden Festival is brought to life by a network of
local organisers, venues, artists, and community groups.
Stephanie Swann
Festival Organiser
Over 80 local individuals and organisations
All these people have kindly given their time and energy to help support the festival.
Independent Creators
Artists, performers, and designers bringing unique experiences to
the festival.
Local Venues
From historic buildings to hidden gardens, venues across
Winchester and the wider district kindly host events throughout the festival.
Meet the people behind the festival
The Garden Festival is organised by Stephanie Swann, who curates and
creates the Festival Programme. Stephanie is best known for creating
the concept for the Winchester Christmas Market in 2006 to much
acclaim. During those first five years of delivering the Christmas
Market, the aim was to make the event as community-focused as possible
and to give local people a sense of ownership. The Garden Festival has
the same objectives, which are more important than ever in our current
times.
There are so many people who have contributed to this 2026 Garden
Festival in a big way that it is difficult to list them all. However,
special thanks should go to:
Chrissie & Richard Morse and Woodman Wines
Key supporter
whose kindness in allowing the Festival to use their magnificent
gardens at The Deane House has given us an exceptional location
for four of our events this year..
Sue Atherton
Owner of Atherton Green Art
Who does everything possible to support the festival.
George Scott-Welsh and Incuhive
Supporter
for his unending positivity, support, and encouragement with this
project.
Callum Muddle
Programmer
a second year Creative Computing student at Winchester School of
Art who has spent many long days and hours designing this website
and app as part of his coursework. His commitment to helping the
festival has been exceptional.
We also thank his lecturer Julian Stadon who introduced Callum to
The Festival and has been a constant, enthusiastic supporter of
the event.
Volunteers
Could you space a few hours to help at one of our events with some
gentle stewarding, meet & greet, leaflet distribution or setting up?
It won’t be anything too onerous! Please do get in touch if you can
help.
Donations, Sponsorship & Investment
The Garden Festival could achieve much so more for our community, city
and region if it had much needed funding. If you can make a donation
however small, we would be most grateful. If you are a potential
sponsor, please get in touch so we can discuss how we can create
bespoke sponsorship packages to ensure you achieve your objectives.
Explore the festival
Use the events page to browse what’s on, filter by date or interest,
and open the map to find activities across Winchester.