Burpee Gardens Open Farm Tour

Our summer wrapped up with a wonderful tour of the Burpee Seed Company’s Fordhook Farm.

Burpee hosts several Open Garden Tours throughout the summer. They are located in Doylestown, PA and they open the farm from 9:30 am -5 pm. It costs $5 for admission, but you receive a $5 coupon to shop in the sale tent. You can take guided tours or do a self tour. With a toddler in tow, we opted for the self tour and it worked out wonderfully. Lectures and demonstrations are also offered and on the day that we went, there was a tomato tasting.

As you enter the gardens, you are treated to a lovely set of sculptures. The strong steel is a fantastic contrast to the delicate nature of the gardens. Plus, the art history geek in me was especially pleased when Tomato said, “Mommy, the sun! It’s a sunflower!” and then proceeded to run towards the sculpture to see it up close.

When you first enter, you can veer to the right to travel through the Kitchen Garden.

In the Kitchen Garden, the Burpee gardeners are constantly conducting research. I had a wonderful conversation with Vinny, who informed us that they try different structures to compare how things grow best, how different varieties grow and they do it organically. This helps them to write descriptions for the upcoming catalogs and see how doing everything on a basic and simple level. The sunflower above can reach 12 feet tall and was currently hovering at 10. It was wonderful to stand beneath them and watch my little one smile and squeal at the sight of them.

Traveling up to Happiness Garden, we passed the beautiful farm house and I fell in love with how dense the approaching garden was. Possible natural fencing for our yard?

For the most part, plants were well labeled so that you could take notes and see what they were growing.

They also a wide variety of plants that are great bee and butterfly magnets. They colors were amazing and it was interesting to see how they have things laid out.

They had wonderful shades of purple and pink throughout the gardens, which are right up my alley.

The detail of hiding fish sculptures, like the one above, throughout the Happiness Garden was a great way to make you smile as you traveled through it all. Tomato had a great time spotting them from the stroller and yelling out the colors as she saw them.

The final garden that we went through was the Pond Garden. It was a little wooded oasis on the land, but the drought has certainly done a number on the streams. I will definitely head up for another visit to the farm. We didn’t stay for the lecture, but did head home with two new blueberry bushes. I can’t wait to see how they do since we got some tips from Vinny on how to help amend our soil to coax them along.

What gardens have you visited that inspire you to do more at home?