Garden Press Event 2017

I managed to wangle an invite to the London Garden Press Event, which is a yearly event aimed at people who write about gardens. Members of the gardening blogging community #gdnbloggers were saying what a great event it was, and we decided that it was a good opportunity for members of the community to meet up, which we did in the afternoon at 2pm

It was also Emma Coopers' Birthday and Beryl over at Mud & Gluts took it upon herself to make Emma a birthday on the basis that you can't have a birthday meet up without cake. We were lucky to meet Emma as she is just at the end of what sounds like it could have been a man cold.

I've known Beryl for a few years now and we have visited each others allotments and exchanged plants and also belong to a number of the same forums and groups. It was so nice to meet up and put faces and personalities to other fellow garden bloggers, as has been so expertly expressed over at The Physic Blogger by Sara Venn

We all sang a hearty rendition of Happy Birthday to Emma, and for a moment all attention from the people on the exhibition stalls and their visitors around us was distracted and on Emma.   

There were a lot of exhibitors there and I arrived about 10:30 after taking a detour to the main entrance above ground that was closed and a guy working on the complex took me through the building to the underpass opposite the entrance to Exhibition Hall 2.

There were lots of exhibitors there more than willing and able to talk about and promote their products. As I was relatively early, I had to do the slow walk looking from side to side to see who they were and what they were promoting, too slow and you would be pounced upon too fast and you did not get time to absorb their displays.

I met and had some lengthy discussions with exhibitors, mainly where the product was of interest and a few that despite informing them I was a blogger that primarily wrote about allotments and I was not really interested in large petrol lawnmowers still insisted in thrusting a bag with promotional goodies in my hand as we departed company.

As a direct result of visiting the press event I will be receiving a number of growing products that I will be adding to my SoilFixer PotatoPot Experiment later in March. 

Above are the memory sticks with marketing material on that I gathered on my travel around the Hall, these are so much better than loads of paper that is heavy, bulky and lets face it primarily just using up trees, they also contain lots of images and useful reference material and I'm going to have fun exploring them.

I will be discussing and reviewing the products and samples that I have been given or are going to be sent to me to trial in later posts.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable day, and I'm looking forward to next years event and hopefully another excuse for fellow gardening bloggers to meet up again.