Horn Fair

Old Pond Garden Diary Update (April-December 2025)

As we come up to Christmas and the end of 2025, this is a great time to look back at how the ‘Old Pond Garden’ (OPG) project has fared this year.

Christmas 2025, dressing the tree of heaven with baubles, plus garden volunteers — Tree of Heaven, *Ailanthus altissima*, dressed up for Christmas
(plus 27 garden volunteers!)

Of course, it’s not just the ‘Old Pond Garden’ project any longer, as volunteer work now covers the whole estate, but we are still fond of the OPG tag. Since April, the Garden Volunteer scheme has been run by Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust (RGHT), however considering 80% of volunteers are also CABAHS members, it’s fair to say we are still very interested and still very involved.

Sharon has taken on the crucial role of Volunteer Lead for RGHT and works with Head Gardener Jason to make sure everything runs smoothly. She posts lovely updates on the garden team’s WhatsApp after every session, keeping us all on track, and sends a report off to RGHT every month.

Here are some highlights picked from Sharon’s reports of the past few months, I make no apology that this is a rather long post – we have done a lot!

Horn Fair 2024

It wasn’t all that “fair” this year, in fact it was fairly wet, but we had such a great day! So many volunteers and visitors turned out to support this traditional event, thank you so much everyone. As well as a huge number of plants for sale, we also had fun with the Gargoyle Trail in the Gardens, which were specially dressed up and Haunted for the day!

Inside Charlton House there were lots of craft and artisan stalls, Frilly’s was open and there were food stalls on the back lawn. The Heritage Hub featured the Ottoman stone and some interesting watercolours of Charlton House over the years. Local community groups had stalls in the Grand Salon and St Luke’s was open for tower tours. Spotlight Dance group and the Morris Dancers were on show as well.

The Morning volunteers setting up the stalls — The Morning Volunteers

Selling frenzy in the Peace GArden — The Morning Volunteers

The gardens looked beautifully Autumnal and we had over 85 children and their families charging about looking for bats, gargoyles, pumpkins and spiders!

Highlight of the day was the Splat the Slug game, all ages had a go!

Charlton House Horn Fair 2023

Once again we ran a successful plant stall at this lovely family event, huge thank you to everyone who donated plants or came along to help. And it was sunny, hooray, even if it was perishing in the shade!

Charlton House and stalls — Producers market

We had a great time dressing up the Gardens with ghosts, bats, spiders etc to make them ‘haunted’, and devising the children’s Pumpkin Trail. In the end we had over 130 children charging about the gardens, doing the Pumpkin Puzzle to find the name of the Charlton House ghost, or just spotting all the silly things we had put in the beds!

The gardens were looking peaceful first thing…

Painting the pumpkins — Setting up the puzzle

Webs in the beds — Setting up the puzzle

Preparations underway. And then it got busy..!

Charlton House held another very successful Horn Fair on Sunday 16th October and CABAHS contributed to that with a range of opportunities for adults and children. We focused on the Old Pond Garden, with a Spooky Spider, Bat and Pumpkin trail for the children, and well-attended tours by Head Gardener Jason Sylvan who explained the work he is leading with the volunteers there. Just outside the Peace Garden, we held one of our famous plant stalls – it was as popular as ever! Here are some photographs of all the activities.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to its success.

Lynda

Horn Fair Sunday Oct 16th

We will have our usual stall at the Horn Fair at Charlton House this Sunday, October 16th, from 11am. This year we will be outside in the gardens, by the Peace Garden gate – hopefully in some lovely Autumnal sunshine!

Members have been very generous with their plant donations and we also have some great plants grown on by the Volunteers in the walled gardens. As well as plants, there will be lavender bags (from the Peace Garden), and seeds for sale, as well as some Notecards featuring the Old Pond Garden, painted by local artist Amabel Barlow. https://www.amabelbarlow.online/my-portfolio-1

Head Gardener Jason Sylvan will be running tours of the garden on the hour from 12, there will be loads of activities for kids including Bouncy Castles, Autumn crafts with Montessori Moments, and our very own Spooky Spider Bat and Pumpkin trail.

Volunteers getting ready for Horn Fair and Spider trail — GETTING READY!

Frilly’s cafe, plus loads of street food, dance and music performances, Morris men and Artisan and Producers Markets. See RGHT website for full details: https://www.greenwichheritage.org/events/horn-fair-2022/

In addition, St Luke’s Church will be open (it is their patron saint St Luke’s day after all.) If you can visit the Church tower, this is highly recommended, the views are incredible!

Kathy

Charlton House Horn Fair 2021

A super-successful day at our CABAHS plant stall at the Horn Fair on 17 October. This annual festival on St Luke’s Day has had a re-boot by the new team at Charlton House and was a very lively event. Our stall made £760, thank you to all who donated plants or helped on the day, these things cannot be done without you all! Lots of commercial and artisan stalls, talks and exhibitions.

CABAHS at the Charlton House Horn Fair, October 2021

Charlton House Horn Fair 2017

CABAHS stall at the Charlton House Horn Fair, October 2017