FOLLOWING the official launch of Capability Brown’s 300th birthday events last month, Kirkharle is continuing the theme with a Food and Flower fair on Sunday, May 1.

Organised in conjunction with the National Gardens Scheme (NGS) and St Oswald’s Hospice, the fair will take place at Kirkharle Courtyard.

Fresh, locally-produced food will be in plentiful supply including local Ponteland lamb, loose leaf tea and chocolate from Newcastle-based Easy Teasy, smoked salts, peppercorns, oils and dried mushrooms from Boulevard Salts in North Shields, Kenspeckle Fudge and Confectionery and Frere Quenelle Liqueurs.

Visitors can also stock up on a wide variety of plants grown by local NGS garden owners.

NGS spokeswoman, Susie White, said it was a great opportunity for gardeners to see the lake at Kirkharle created from what is believed to be an original design by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, whose 300th anniversary is being celebrated this year.

Susie said: “There will be specialist art and craft stalls and you can wander by the serpentine lake, recently created according to Brown’s original plan.

“From small beginnings in 1927, the National Gardens Scheme has grown to become the most significant charitable funder of nursing in the UK.

“It currently gives more than £2.6m every year to its beneficiaries, providing essential support for Marie Curie, Macmillan Cancer Support, Hospice UK as well as some smaller charities.”

The art and craft workshops will also be open for business.

Admission is from 11am to 4pm and will be by donation.

Kirkharle is proud to be associated with the NGS,which has donated more than £45m to its nominated beneficiaries and partners since it began in 1927.

2016 is also an exciting year for St Oswald’s Hospice as they are celebrating 30 years of caring for adults, young people, children and their families across the North-East.

The Food and Flower fair promises to be a great family day out with the chance to see Brown’s birthplace and Kirkharle lake which has been created from one of his earliest landscape drawings found on the estate.

The committee for Northumberland County Show has decided to join in Capability’s anniversary celebrations and has invited school children from reception to year 9 to stretch their imaginations and enter a ‘Dream Garden’ design competition.

Models, paintings, scale drawings, collages – anything goes!

Children can bring their entries to the ‘Glorious Northumberland’ tent on the show field at Bywell from Friday, May 27 to Sunday, May 29 or up to 10am on show day Monday, May 30.

Entries will be displayed in the tent and judged by Nick Owen of the Northumbria Gardens Trust and John and Kitty Anderson from Kirkharle.

Further anniversary celebrations will be at Kirkharle on Saturday, June 4, at 11am, when artist Tim Scott Bolton will be giving a talk.

Tim has travelled the length of the country painting Capability landscapes and his paintings are reproduced in a book entitled A Brush with Brown which will be available to buy on the day.

A selection of Tim’s paintings will hang in the Loraine room above the coffee house until Saturday, June 11.

For more information go to www.kirkharlecourtyard.co.uk or call the coffee house on (01830) 540362.