Autumn in Dorset has a peculiar habit of turning the ground into a gallery, and the Secret Fungi Festival is the occasion to actually look at it. The festival returns to Careys Secret Garden in Wareham from Friday 23 to Sunday 25 October, run in partnership with Jurassic Coast Mushrooms, and it turns a 3.5-acre Victorian walled garden into something of a fungi classroom for the weekend.
Every week we pick 🏆 the 5 best 🏆 things to do in Bournemouth and send them to your inbox. Just one weekly email, no spam.
By submitting your email, you accept our Privacy Policy
The talks are the backbone of the thing. There is a session on medicinal fungi, another on fungal networks, and separate slots on edible wild mushrooms, beginner mycology and the role fungi play in ecosystems. Alongside those, there are foraging experiences, workshops and a fungi-themed market. If you want to actually grow something, Andy Knott runs mushroom-growing workshops from 2pm to 3pm each day at £15 a head. The Saturday evening is the social centrepiece: a foraged feast hosted by Urban Forage from 5pm to 9pm, with seasonal food, drink and live music. For families, there are UV-lit nature trails, storytelling and crafts.
Money is worth sorting before you go, because the ticket structure has a few moving parts. A day ticket is £18.50, with children under 12 free, and Sunday is the same price. A limited number of full weekend tickets are £50. Saturday is the one to be careful with: an evening-only ticket runs from 5pm to 9pm for £12, while a day-and-evening combo is £25. Admission to the festival is required for everyone, and workshops and foraging experiences are booked separately and do not include entry, with the exception of the Saturday evening Foraged Feast ticket, which covers the evening event. Tickets arrive by email, so it is worth a glance at the spam folder if they have not turned up.
Knowing the setting helps. Careys Secret Garden is a 3.5-acre walled Victorian garden on the Isle of Purbeck, just outside Wareham, enclosed by original Clayton red brick walls built in 1883 that are earmarked for Grade II listing. The site sat untouched for more than forty years before being rediscovered in 2019, then restored and opened to the public in May 2021. It is still being shaped, with a focus on permaculture, rewilding and natural gardening, and the grounds run in a dozen different directions: an arid garden, a rose garden, a traditional orchard, a local wildflower meadow, a tea and herb garden, a food forest, a veggie patch, a new wildlife pond, a mushroom corner, a stumpery and a permaculture zone.
On the practical side, there is no camping on site, and only registered assistance and service dogs in work uniform are allowed. Payment is cashless, and wheelchair access is available via one or more routes, though the garden asks anyone with mobility issues to get in touch in advance. The garden itself is open for visits Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 3pm. It sits at Careys Secret Garden, Wareham, Dorset, BH20 7PG, about a three-minute drive from Wareham station, eleven minutes from Poole and nineteen from Dorchester. For the full programme and tickets, the garden's own site is the place to go.
Published Date
15 October 2026
