I have been looking forward to today’s outing for some time now. It was September 2021 when we last visited the Autumn flower show at Newby Hall on the outskirts of the market town of Ripon in North Yorkshire. 

The weather forecast for today was pretty good for looking round a flower show, slightly dull and cloudy, no rain, and a temperature of 16c, not to hot and not to cold.

Today was the first day of the Autumn flower show which runs through till Sunday.

It is a fifty-minute journey from home to Newby Hall, we were parked in an alternative carpark due to the sheer volume of traffic and visitors coming to the flower show. It was just after 10.00am when we had our tickets scanned and joined the throngs of people walking up the main avenue with Newby Hall standing proud at the end of the avenue.

Small businesses and enterprises were set up in small Gazeboes which lined the main avenue, many selling bulbs, pot plants, others were selling a wide range of garden tools and equipment, others fancy ornaments, hot tubs, just about anything you could think of for your garden could have been purchased here today and the remainder of the weekend. 

We slowly made our way along the long line of stalls heading towards the main house, till we reached the food part where we ventured off for a delicious small hogg roast and cup of tea, it was nice to have a sit down for twenty minutes or so. 

Suitably refreshed we continued our tour of the show, heading into Newby Hall the main house. I have never had a look around the house before but over the weekend several of the ground floor rooms have been filled with beautiful floral installations, which complimented the interiors of this beautiful 18century house. There was a lovely display of autumnal plants around the main entrance to the house, the railings had been decorated with a wide selection of fruit and flowers, even the two dogs, one sat either side of the entrance had fancy collars on.

With tantalising titles and themes inspired by the crime writing greats, we headed into the house to delve into the exciting world of mystery in floral form with Detective Rufus Smythe, the sleuth extraordinaire, to discover the thrilling ‘Blooms of Deception’. The opulent principal rooms of this beautiful Grade I listed house had been transformed by a host of talented florists including celebrity floral designer Jonathan Moseley and award-winning florist Helen James to become the canvas for a floral narrative straight off the pages of a mystery novel. I have to say the arrangements were stunning and set the grand rooms of nicely. 

After reluctantly leaving the house, we continued our journey into the fruit and vegetable marquee. All the vegetables were neatly laid out in sections, a huge display of apples filled one end of the marquee, I have never seen so many different varieties of apples that were on display today. Rows and rows of them neatly laid out in small wicker baskets. Some of the fruit displays were amazing. The Cauliflowers on display for example were huge, I have never seen them in a display before till today, Parsnips too, looked beautiful, scrubbed clean, their roots stretching out across the display tables, some in excess of four to five feet long! The star of the show though was the onions, as we entered the marquee the judges were announcing the weight of some of them to rapturous applause from the competitors and spectator’s alike, press photographers huddled around the commentator as he announced the weights, some 16 lbs, others seventeen lbs, the overall winner and setting a new world record was one weighing in at 19.7lbs, when the weight was announced the applause and cheers in the marquee was quite deafening. The owner of the record-breaking onion had travelled up from Guernsey. I never realised how passionate people could get towards vegetables.

After leaving the hullabaloo of the vegetable marquee, we headed over to the more tranquil floral marquee. The floral arrangements were works of art, colourful, bright and vibrant, some of the designers’ true artists in their floral field. Another section that took my attention was the rows and rows of Dalias, I hadn’t realised how many different varieties there were, all exceptionally well formed and colourful, some spikey, others like honeycomb globes. 

Many of the floral and agricultural societies had also put on some quite spectacular displays, ones of note that I took a particular fancy to where the fuchsia displays and Cacti displays, quite amazing.

After a walk around all the floral exhibits we headed outside for a very nice coffee and cake adjacent to the bandstand before the journey home. A most enjoyable day.