Hidden Gardens
FRI 11 – SUN 13 JUL 2025
A highlight of the Festival programme, Frome residents open their doors wide and invite you to discover the Hidden Gardens of Frome. Explore the byways of Frome, enjoy gardens lovingly prepared by volunteers, treat yourself to a piece of cake and a cup of tea, or just wander around and have a chat. Join hundreds of visitors discovering beautiful please across the town and talk with knowledgeable gardeners and wildlife enthusiasts. Many gardeners raise money for a variety of good causes during the weekend.
This year, the Hidden Gardens will have a particular focus on wildlife friendly gardening, including some from Frome’s Wild Bunch and some accredited by Somerset Wildlife’s “Team Wilder” project.
The programme for 2025 is now being prepared so we can no longer take any new entries for this year
What we can promise you is an even bigger event, with over 50 gardens opening for visits, including 15 completely new sites to enjoy.
Ticket details to be announced May 2025
Point of sale for physical programmes:
- Discover Frome in Frome Library
- Cheese & Grain
- Ellenbray Press
- Frome Town Hall
- Hunting Raven Bookshop
- Victoria Park Cafe
All funds raised support Frome Festival.
2024 Review
from Andy Jones, Hidden Gardens Coordinator
Once again this year’s Hidden Gardens event exceeded expectations! Between July 12 – 14 there were hundreds of people wandering around town, visiting some of the 45 sites that opened their garden gates to the public across those three days. One of the less obvious benefits of the event is that complete strangers recognise fellow enthusiasts just by sight of our eye-catching programme, and start chatting about where they’ve been and what they’ve enjoyed. That social interaction is of course lubricated with liberal cups of tea and slices of cake, sold by our volunteer gardeners to benefit their own favourite good causes, and this year that amounted to an additional £3,300 for groups like Fair Frome, Dorothy House, Purple Elephant amongst many others. I really do thank all those gardeners (and non-gardening partners) who worked so hard to make each visit to their garden special.
But of course the primary beneficiary, and the main reason I run this event, is to support Frome Festival. Somehow, our little town of Frome manages to stage a 10 day Festival that engages thousands of people across all age ranges, with over 200 events across more than 40 venues – and the revenue from Hidden Gardens programme sales is a major contributor to making that happen. This year you bought over 750 hard copies of the programme, with another 227 people choosing to download a copy from our website. That brought in over £4,500 towards next year’s Frome Festival. So as well as thanking Mercer Design for the design and artwork, and the Cheese and Grain, Hunting Raven, Ellenbray, Discover Frome and Victoria Park Café for selling those programmes, I really do thank everyone single one of you who bought a programme and came out to enjoy the Hidden Gardens of Frome.
It’s all happening again next year, July 11 – 13, so if you are thinking it might be fun to open your garden as part of the 2025 event please do get in touch. If you can persuade some neighbours to join in, that’s even better as we always find that local clusters of gardens get higher footfall.