By Renee Wood
Alowyn Gardens has opened its pumpkin harvest for Autumn, with many visitors coming by to see the interesting display.
The gardens grow many different varieties for the season and has held special events to celebrate the vegetable in previous years.
However, Alowyn Gardens owner John van de Linde said this year there is only a static display.
“Last year, we opened on the Saturday morning, at eight o’clock on the Friday night we had a lockdown,” Mr van de Linde said.
‘So [this year] we have a scaled down version, there’s probably only maybe 20 per cent of what we normally would have but it’s still fun.”
The pumpkin harvest started several years ago as a way to get children interested in their vegetables and growing something for themselves.
Mr van de Linde said the many shapes and sizes in the pumpkin family are quite appealing to budding green thumbs.
“Kids go home with a picture on their phone and then they will look it up and maybe spring comes by and they get a couple of seeds and plant a few in the garden and it’s part of the fun to stay connected.”
Some varieties part of the Cucurbitaceae family have historical meaning such as the gourds which were used as storage containers and decorations in Europe and Africa.
This was something that also sparked John’s interest in the vegetable group after he saw gourds that were hundreds of years old in display cabinets in France.
“They were all either carved or had done really interesting things with them… and I thought isn’t it a shame that people are so disconnected from their source of food, and so I wanted to do something about that, so we started growing them [gourds] and then we started growing the pumpkins.”
The gardens grow 20 main varieties which can be seen in the current display.
