Venue
Wisley Lane, Wisley, Woking, Surrey, GU23 6QB, England, United Kingdom
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RHS Flavours of Autumn Harvest Festival guide
Harvest cooking and edible beds at Wisley.
In short
Flavours of Autumn suits gardeners and home cooks, with chef demonstrations, grower advice and seasonal produce stalls across RHS gardens. It usually runs from early September to mid-October garden by garden, and Wisley hosts a five-day edition in early to mid October. The RHS publishes dates in summer, so choose your garden first.
Flavours of Autumn is the Royal Horticultural Society's harvest festival, held in turn at its five gardens in England. The idea is simple: show people how food is grown, then how to cook it. Expect chefs at work in demonstration kitchens, growers giving advice, tours of the edible beds and stalls selling seasonal produce.
Wisley in Surrey, the society's flagship garden, hosts the biggest edition, but each garden puts its own stamp on the event, from fruit shows in Devon to produce competitions in Essex and foraging in the north. It is aimed at home growers and curious cooks alike, and children are well catered for.
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Key Facts & Stats:
Where: Woking, United Kingdom
Venue: RHS Garden Wisley
Held: Every year
Type of event: Food Festivals, Leisure Events, Exhibition
Currency: Pound sterling (GBP, £)
Time zone: Greenwich Mean Time, UTC+0 (UTC+1 in summer)
Language: English
Map
Getting around
Hotels near the venue fill up around the event dates.
Footwear and clothing for a day in the garden
The festival is mostly outdoors, and an October day in a big garden means hours on grass and gravel in changeable weather.
- Wear boots or waterproof shoes. The fruit field is often muddy at this time of year.
- Layer up. Mornings can be cold even when the afternoon turns warm.
- Pack a compact waterproof and leave the umbrella, which is awkward at busy stalls and in demonstration crowds.
- Bring a sturdy bag if you plan to buy produce. Apples, squashes and jars add up quickly.
Activities for children and when they run
The festival works well for families, but timing matters.
- At Wisley the children's mud kitchen ran only on the Saturday and Sunday in 2026. Pack spare clothes, because the name is accurate.
- Agree a meeting point at the start. The market and demonstration areas get crowded at weekends, and the garden is large enough to lose people in.
- Rosemoor had a woodland play café in 2026, a handy stop for younger children.
Admission, RHS membership and talks
Flavours of Autumn has no separate entry fee. You pay standard garden admission, booked online in advance, and RHS members enter free.
- If you plan to visit several gardens in a year, a membership can pay for itself. The RHS also sells a joint membership.
- Weekend slots go first, so book those well before the day.
- Wisley's Hilltop Live programme of talks and demonstrations is free and needs no booking.
What happens on the day
- 5–6 September 2026
RHS Garden Harlow Carr, Yorkshire
The northern garden opened the 2026 round.
- 12–13 September 2026
RHS Garden Bridgewater, Greater Manchester
The second northern weekend.
- 2–4 October 2026
RHS Garden Hyde Hall, Essex
The first of the southern gardens.
- 3–11 October 2026
RHS Garden Rosemoor, Devon
The longest run of the round, nine days.
- 7–11 October 2026
RHS Garden Wisley, Surrey
The flagship edition and the last of the season, Wednesday to Sunday.
Choosing an RHS garden and planning a day at Wisley
Start by deciding which garden. Wisley has run the largest version of the festival over five days, while the other four RHS gardens give it a weekend or a few days each with their own slant. If you live near Devon, Essex, Yorkshire or Greater Manchester, the local garden may suit better than a long drive to Surrey.
There is no festival ticket as such. You book ordinary garden admission online through the RHS, and members get in free. Booking ahead matters most at weekends, when families come for the children's activities.
At Wisley, give the festival the morning. Join a guided walk through the World Food Garden, catch a cookery demonstration, then work through the market for lunch. Hilltop Live runs free talks and demonstrations every day from 11.30am, with no booking, which makes a useful filler between festival sessions. Keep the afternoon for the wider garden. It covers 240 acres, and the fruit field alone deserves an unhurried loop.
Past festival dates and waiting for 2027
The 2026 festival finished on 11 October, and the RHS had not announced its 2027 plans by the middle of that month. Watch its events pages through the summer. Past form suggests the round will again run from early September to the middle of October.
At Wisley the weekdays are the calmer choice. The cookery theatre, the market and the garden tours run every festival day, and jazz plays each afternoon. The children's mud kitchen was a Saturday and Sunday feature only, so families tend to concentrate on those two days.
From the London Harvest Festival to the World Food Garden
For years the society celebrated the harvest indoors, in London. Its Lindley Halls on Vincent Square, a short walk from Victoria station, hosted the RHS London Harvest Festival Show. In 2017, across 3 and 4 October, growers competed with giant pumpkins, nurseries and food producers ran stalls, and an evening late brought apple bobbing and pumpkin carving. Then the RHS moved its harvest celebrations out into its gardens, where the food is actually grown.
Wisley suits the idea well. Its story starts in 1878, when the businessman George Fergusson Wilson took on Glebe Farm. Once Wilson had died, the neighbouring Oakwood site's owner, Sir Thomas Hanbury, gave the garden to the society in 1903. Today its fruit field grows apples, pears and other fruit trained into many forms, and the World Food Garden is the focus of the festival's guided tours.
Each garden adds its own flavour. Rosemoor leaned on fruit and drawing in 2026. Hyde Hall staged the RHS Autumn Competitions with more than 150 classes. Bridgewater invited Manchester food businesses and led foraging walks in its woodland.
Getting there
Flying in
International visitors usually arrive at London Heathrow, the closest major airport to Wisley; routes include Dhaka to London and Bangkok to London.
By car
RHS Garden Wisley is on Wisley Lane, off the A3 a little south of junction 10 of the M25 (postcode GU23 6QB). That junction has been under long-running roadworks; check the RHS website for closure notices on the morning of your visit.
By train and bus
Take a train to Woking or Guildford and change to a bus. Whitebus routes 462 and 463 pass the garden, and Falcon's 714 also stops there. Check return times before you leave, especially late in the day.
Between gardens
The five gardens are spread across England, from Devon to Yorkshire, and a hire car for the UK is far simpler than stitching trains together.
Where to stay during the festival
Most visitors treat Wisley as a day trip from London. Staying in Woking or Guildford instead puts the garden a short bus ride away and lets you arrive at opening time, before the weekend crowds.
Weather and what to pack
October in Surrey is mixed. The Wisley weather station records 1991–2020 normals of 15.6 °C for the average October high and 7.5 °C for the low, with about 74 mm of rain over 11 wet days and some 112 hours of sunshine.
Worth packing
- Waterproof shoes or boots for wet grass
- A waterproof jacket
- A tote bag for market produce
- A warm layer for late afternoons
Car hire in Woking
Airport transfer to RHS Flavours of Autumn Harvest Festival
Met at arrivals at London Heathrow Airport (LHR) and driven door to door to RHS Garden Wisley.
- London Heathrow Airport (LHR) → RHS Garden Wisley
- 33 km · 30 min
Restaurants and food in United Kingdom
Places to eat in United Kingdom before or after the celebrations.
Magpie Café
14 Pier Road, Whitby YO21 3PU, United Kingdom
Cuisine:SeafoodFish and chips
- Dine-in
- Takeaway
Ubiquitous Chip
12 Ashton Lane, Glasgow G12 8SJ, United Kingdom
Cuisine:ScottishModern British
- Dine-in
- Bar
The Kitchin
78 Commercial Quay, Leith, Edinburgh EH6 6LX, United Kingdom
Cuisine:Modern ScottishSeasonal
- Dine-in
Dishoom Covent Garden
12 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9FB, United Kingdom
Cuisine:IndianBombay café
- Dine-in
- Bar
- Outdoor seating
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Timing & weather
The RHS had not announced a 2027 date when we checked in October 2026. Keep an eye on the RHS events pages over the summer, when the line-up usually appears. Look up the specific garden too, because each one gets its own weekend.
Yes. The glasshouse, opened on 26 June 2007, stands inside the garden and is covered by the same admission. It is at its best in autumn and makes a dry refuge if the weather turns.
General
A fruit exhibition. In 2026 it raised the curtain at Rosemoor over the first weekend, before tastings, drawing and harvest games took over for the rest of the week.
Yes, that is what they are for. Hyde Hall in Essex hosted them in 2026 with more than 150 classes covering home-grown produce and flowers. Talks on preserving and fermenting ran alongside the judging.
Rosemoor had one in 2026, alongside The Big Draw and a woodland play café. It is the one garden where the harvest theme reaches the glass.
No. The indoor harvest show ended after 2017, and the society now marks the harvest out in its gardens, where visitors can see the crops growing before they are cooked.
Very. It welcomed 1,255,706 visitors in 2025, making it the second most visited paid-entry garden in the UK after Kew. Festival weekends add to that, so weekdays are noticeably calmer.
The garden's science and learning building, with a laboratory, a library and space for events. Its free daily talks and demonstrations start at 11.30am, a good complement to the festival programme.
Yes. It grows large numbers of apples, pears and other fruit, many trained into special shapes, and autumn is when it is laden. Paths there can be muddy after rain.
Not in 2026. The festival had closed at every garden by 11 October, while the RHS half-term programme ran from 17 October to 1 November. Families after both need two separate visits.
Stay & facilities
The Bridgewater line-up in 2026 included The Life Larder, Open Kitchen MCR, The Vegetarian Society, Holl's Pickles and Amber's Allotment, alongside woodland foraging walks and live music.