TOBY BUCKLAND
Toby Buckland hosts the festival annually and is a qualified horticulturist, author and a regular broadcaster for BBC One and Two’s presenting team from RHS Chelsea Flowershow. In 2014 Toby joined forces with Country Gardener Magazine to create Toby’s Garden Festival to champion the smaller, specialist nurseries. The first Garden Festival took place at Powderham Castle near Exeter to popular acclaim and is now a premier gardening event in the South West.
Now you can join him and get in touch every Sunday from 10am to 2pm on BBC Radio Devon (and BBC Sounds) for his popular gardening show. Toby’s giving talks both days, and will be out and about saying hello to visitors.
Toby is speaking at the festival on 2nd and 3rd May 2025.
JOE SWIFT
BBC TV presenter, garden writer and columnist Joe Swift is speaking on Sat 3rd May at our 11th Garden Festival in 2025.
Joe Swift has presented on Gardeners’ World since the late 1990’s and has fronted numerous TV shows including Open Gardens, Small Town Gardens, Garden Makers and Garden Invaders and appeared on Celebrity Masterchef. He writes regularly for The Times and has written 3 books – ‘The Plant Room’, and ‘Joe’s Urban Garden Handbook’, and ‘Joe’s Allotment’. Joe has designed many gardens for TV, including one for Comic Relief, many for Gardeners’ World & all of the Alan Titchmarsh’s ‘How to be a Gardener 2’ series. Joe is also patron to many gardening charities including The Horniman Museum and The Harington Scheme. He also plays bass guitar, is a life-long Arsenal fan and plays football and golf whenever he gets the chance!
FRANCES TOPHILL
Known for presenting on Gardeners’ World and ITV’s Love Your Garden, Frances travels all over the country to create surprise transformations to the outdoor spaces of some very deserving people. She works on a number of community gardening projects in the South West and has recently published a sixth book, A Year in a Small Garden. In June 2022, her first show-garden won a platinum medal and best in show at Gardeners’ World Live at the NEC in Birmingham.Frances also works with the Royal Horticultural Society’s Campaign for School Gardening to promote gardening to young people, and is a keen quilter and amateur potter. Hailing from Deal in Kent, Frances now lives in Devon, having graduated with a BSc in Horticulture with Plantmanship at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Frances joins us on Fri 2nd May 2025.
JACQUIE FELIX-MITCHELL
Jacquie is the founder of Oasis Garden Design, an artisan garden design studio based in Devon with a huge following throughout the county and was so popular with our visitors for this year’s festival.
BECKY SEARLE
Also back with us in 2025 is Becky Searle, an ecologist, botanist and kitchen gardener best known for combining science with gardening and her passion for soil. Becky has a new book coming out in 2025 Grow a New Garden, published by Chelsea Green Publishing.
DAN FARRELL-WRIGHT
Wickham’s owner Dan Farrell-Wright will again host the Wine Zone where you can sample and buy wine from Devon, England and abroad, and meet other growers and makers. Wickhams are an award winning independent wine merchant, discovering wines from great vineyards all around the world. Wickhams was awarded the title “Best Specialist Merchant England” by the International Wine Challenge.
SUSY ATKINS
The BBC Saturday Kitchen expert will be hosting talks as part of our Food & Drink Market, a showcase for our fabulous local products, on both days of the festival in 2025. Susy will be giving her insider wine tasting tips and, if you’re lucky, a taster of a local tipple or too, as well as sharing her knowledge of her favourite Devon vineyards and where to find them. You’ll be able to meet local vineyard growers and vintners at the festival too.
MARK DIACONO
Award-winning author and Devon grower, Mark Diacono, is joining us at the festival in 2025. Mark who has written eight books, will be hosting talks as part of our Food & Drink Market, a showcase for our fabulous local producers, on both days of the festival. Mark is known for encouraging people to consider growing unusual and forgotten food along with the best of the familiar. Kiwis, sweet cicely, chocolate vines, Japanese wineberries and Vietnamese coriander, pecans, quince, almonds, Szechuan pepper and mulberries are among the many incredible flavours we can grow.
You can also hear Mark Diacono discuss his latest book, Abundance: Recipes and Stories from a Gardening Cook.
STEVE WILLIAMS OF GOOD GAME
Steve Williams of award winning Good Game is on a mission to create the best cured meats in the world and is sharing his secrets and demonstrating how to produce his famous Nitrate & Preservative Free Bacon at home. From small facilities in Topsham and the Clyst Valley, the Good Game team use traditional simple methods to make great food.
“Everything we do is by hand, like true artisans”, says Steve. “We cure using only salt and natural Exe and Clyst Valley air. We use no nitrates or saltpetre. We don’t even use commercial drying chambers – we air-cure the traditional old-fashioned way. The Italians are the inspiration.”
Come and see Steve in the Food, Drink Devon Marquee, and learn to make and taste Devon’s version of the Dolce Vita!
HARRIET DE WINTON
Harriett de Winton is an award winning and best-selling botanical artist teaching how to create contemporary watercolour artworks to treasure and share.
From her Devon studio near Torquay, she teaches watercolour painting via workshops and online sessions, now available throughout the world. Her teaching is much in demand. She started out seven years ago creating hand painted watercolour wedding stationery and then developed the teaching experience with popular books ‘A Year of Watercolour; A Seasonal Guide to Botanical Watercolour Painting’; ‘New Botanical Painting’and ‘Birds, Bees and Blossoms’ -a step by step guide to Botanical and Animal Watercolour Painting’. She still creates bespoke stationery suites for all over the world.
FRANKIE HUTCH
Frankie is one half of the formidable husband and wife team of Rob and Frankie Hutch who are one of the leading houseplants specialists in the southwest. Their specialist store, Hutch Houseplants, in Exeter is literally a jungle bursting with exotic foliage right in the middle of a bustling city. Apart from exhibiting their wonderful RHS award-winning houseplants at the festival, Frankie will hosting workshops over the two days teaching how to create and maintain wonderful sealed glass terrariums.
It was Frankie’s love of planting up terrariums which lured her into the world of houseplants and she is now keen to pass on that enthusiasm. First invented in 19th century London, terrariums are self-sustaining ecosystems for houseplants.
PAUL JUPP
Meadow in My Garden’s Paul Jupp is an inspirational campaigner, helping people to go wild in their gardens and working with community groups, councils and landscapers across the UK to transform monocultures into wildlife friendly planting schemes. At the festival Paul will join soil health guru, Eddie Bailey from RhizoPhyllia the Lab, a focus for all gardeners keen to look after Nature and the soil. The knowledgeable duo will be running free hands-on workshops, showing how to choose the right wildflower seeds for your soil and sharing the latest thinking on sowing, ground preparation and no-dig gardening. Interactive displays including powerful microscopes give visitors a glimpse of the micro-life that lives in the soil below our feet.
ROB EVANS
Rob Evans is an internationally respected expert of dahlias in their many forms, and a Gold
Medal winning exhibitor at many RHS shows. He runs Pheasant Acre Plants, an established
family business near Bridgend in South Wales and is a regular and popular exhibitor at Toby’s Garden Fest.
Rob will be talking on everyday dahlias.
JEREMY WILSON
Jeremy Wilson is one of Britain’s experts on camellias. He runs Strete Gate Camellias in a
picturesque spot near Dartmouth, overlooking the sea, and propagates and sells in excess of
500 different camellias. He is a regular Gold Medal winner at RHS shows and will be revealing some tricks of the trade to help us exhibit our camellias at the CGS Spring Flower Show. Jeremy’s talk is titled ‘My passion for Camellias’.
STELLA EXLEY
Stella Exley is an independent nurserywoman who runs her own hardy plant nursery
Harespring Cottage Plants in South Hams, Devon and is a sought after garden club and festival speaker and the proud holder of three National Plant collections Camassie, Sidalceaand Uvularia.
Stella will be sharing her ‘Hardy Plants to Die For’.
EDDIE BAILEY
Eddie is the cofounder of the RhizoPhyllia School of Gardening and on a mission to share new techniques and insights helping gardeners to grow nutrient-rich food and connect with nature.
Eddie is a geologist with a passion for the importance of soil and a keen interest in new thinking about its care and cultivation. Eddie and partner Harry set up the RhizoPhyllia School of Gardening in 2022 and run workshops that help gardeners understand and harness the micro-life in our gardens known as ‘soil food web’. Eddie is an inspirational speaker, go to his talk and it may just change the way you garden!
AMRIT MADHOO
After a career in the energy sector, Amrit and his wife Jenny took over the South Devon Chilli Farm in 2022. A passionate lifelong horticulturist, Amrit enjoys spending as much time as he can in any of the ten polytunnels on the farm site, tending the thousands of chilli plants they grow each year. Over 5 tonnes of chillies a year are produced at South Devon Chilli Farm, which are used either in their own range of chilli sauces, preserves and chocolate, or sold as seeds, seedlings or plants via their farm shop and website. Amrit has introduced several new varieties to the stable since taking over, several of which hail from his native Trinidad and Tobago.
JOHN MATHEWS
Polytunnels are brilliant for allotments and gardens and a great alternative to greenhouses. John Mathews, who runs Somerset based Whitebird Polytunnels, will be explaining how to make the most of them and how they can add a totally new dimension to your garden and growing.
PAUL DIBLEY
Thousands or gardeners are proud owners of the houseplant streptocarpus,a popular, a relatively inexpensive, easy-to-grow plant which is grown in a wide range of attractive colours and which will produce flowers over a long season. Paul Dibley is an expert on the plant and runs Dibley’s Nurseries in North Wales which specialises in this houseplant. Their own Streptocarpus ‘Harlequin Blue’ was named last year at RHS President’s Chelsea Show Plant of the Decade. Paul will be talking on ‘Growing and caring for streptocarpus’.
KEVIN SMITH
Kevin Smith knows a thing or two about roses. That’s because he grows 100,000 roses of every type on his Cornish Rose Farm in Mitchell, Cornwall, and is acknowledged as one of the finest award-winning roses in the country. He exhibited at Toby ‘s Garden Fest in 2024 for the first time, so we’re delighted to welcome him back as a speaker and exhibitor in 2025.
Kevin”s talks is titled ‘Getting the best from your roses’.
MIKE ARTHURS
Hostas are very popular long lived perennials and one of the leading South West experts on these plants is Mike Arthurs. Mike owns and runs a plant nursery, Mikes’ Hostas, in west Somerset where he raises over 200 varieties of hostas from the diminutive Blue Mouse Ears to the outrageously large Empress Wu.
DAN UPSHER
Dan Upsher is passionate about ponds and through his award winning Somerset company, DU Waterscapes, is set to inspire anyone who is thinking of adding a pond or water feature to their garden. At the festival, he’ll be sharing his knowledge and skills on how to design a pond, how to use the latest technology to make the most of it and what plants to add.
Dan’s talk is titled ‘Techniques for a Perfect Pond’.
CHRISTINE ALFORD
Christine is an RHS-trained plantswoman and gardener whose passion for planting led her to start her own her own business, Future Blooms, a new gardening service offering garden maintenance, planting and design.
Christine will be talking on how to plant out a new garden, explaining the combinations of plants, flowers and grasses that work best for a contemporary, wildlife-friendly look.
