Stanhill opens 3 October and Spadework's free patch on 5 October, but Broadditch has cancelled its field. Prices, booking rules and how full each date is.
Pumpkin picking near Sevenoaks means a short drive out of town, because the town itself has no pumpkin field. What it does have is half a dozen working farms within about forty minutes, most of them on the north Kent fruit-growing belt around Dartford and Gravesend, plus a couple of places closer in where you can buy a home-grown pumpkin without walking through a muddy field at all.
This guide covers the farms that actually grow and sell their own pumpkins, with the booking rules, the prices, and what each has confirmed for 2026. This year that matters more than usual: the dry summer has hit the Kent crop, one of the big local fields has cancelled its season entirely, and the patches that are open release their October tickets from late August and will not add to a full session.
What is confirmed for autumn 2026 so far
Three places are taking pumpkin pickers this October and one is not opening at all.
Stanhill Farm at Wilmington published its 2026 dates and opened booking in the first week of September (Stanhill Farm). It runs 17 dates, the earliest of any farm on this list:
- Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October
- Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October
- Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October
- then daily from Tuesday 20 to Friday 30 October
Entry is £7.50 for one vehicle of up to eight people, or one walk-in group of up to eight, including parking and a wheelbarrow. That makes it the cheapest field entry in the area this year.
PYO Pumpkins at Hoo has been on sale since 5pm on Friday 28 August, with twelve dates from 10 to 31 October at £10 for a vehicle of up to seven seats and £15 for a minibus (PYO Pumpkins; TicketSource).
Broadditch is the bad news. The farm grows its pumpkins on rainfall alone, and this year’s dry summer has cut its crop from a normal 20,000 to around 1,500. It has decided not to open its pick-your-own field this October, and the Spooky Trailer Ride is resting with it. The carving workshops survive, Monday 26 to Thursday 29 October at £7.50 a person with the pumpkin included, and its homegrown pumpkins and squash will still be sold from the farm shop (Broadditch Farm Shop). The farm says this is a break for 2026, not the end, and it expects the field back for 2027 if next season grows normally. It is the same drought that has put Sevenoaks on a hosepipe ban since August.
Spadework at Offham has now put its 2026 dates out, though not on its pick-your-own page, which is still a blog post from October 2024. The dates are in the charity’s events calendar: the PYO Pumpkin Garden opens on Monday 5 October and runs to Saturday 31 October, Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm, free to enter, free to park and no booking (Spadework). That makes it the second place open this year, the only one open seven days a week, and the only one you can walk into without a ticket.
Riverhill Himalayan Gardens, two miles south of Sevenoaks, has published its 2026 Pumpkin Festival as Saturday 17 October to Sunday 1 November, 10am to 4pm, with no pre-booking and no charge on top of normal garden admission (Riverhill Himalayan Gardens). All were checked on 20 September 2026.
Every place on this list has now said what it is doing this October, so the dates and prices below are 2026’s unless the text says otherwise.
Pumpkin patches near Sevenoaks compared
| Farm | Roughly from Sevenoaks | 2026 dates | Pick your own? | Entry cost | Booking |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stanhill Farm, Wilmington | 25 min | 3 to 30 Oct, 17 dates, on sale | Yes, wheelbarrow patch | £7.50 per vehicle, confirmed for 2026 | Essential, booking open now |
| Broadditch Farm, Southfleet | 25 min | Field cancelled for 2026; carving workshops 26 to 29 Oct | Not this year, drought | Workshop £7.50 a head with pumpkin | Workshops bookable now |
| PYO Pumpkins, Hoo | 40 min | 10 to 31 Oct, 12 dates, on sale | Yes, field | £10 per vehicle, confirmed for 2026 | Essential, booking open now |
| Spadework, Offham | 20 min | 5 to 31 Oct, every day, confirmed | Yes, pumpkin garden | Free entry, pay per pumpkin | Not needed |
| Castle Farm, Shoreham | 15 min | Shop, September to November | No, sold from the shop | Free to visit | Not needed |
| Riverhill, Sevenoaks | 5 min | 17 Oct to 1 Nov, confirmed | No, pumpkin festival | Garden admission, £14 adult | Not needed |
Two patterns are worth noticing before you book anything. The pick-your-own farms charge for the car rather than the head, so a full car of eight at Stanhill works out at under £1 each to get in. And the free-entry options, Spadework and Castle Farm, are the ones you can do on a whim at 4pm on a Tuesday without a ticket.
Stanhill Farm, Wilmington
The closest large pick-your-own patch to Sevenoaks, on Birchwood Road in Wilmington just outside Dartford, DA2 7HD. Stanhill has run its pumpkin patch for over a decade alongside a farm shop, a maize maze and summer PYO, and the format is the classic one: grab a wheelbarrow, walk into the field, fill it, pay at the end (Stanhill Farm).
The 2026 dates are published and booking is open: the first three weekends of October (3 and 4, 10 and 11, 17 and 18), then daily from Tuesday 20 to Friday 30 October. Opening times for the patch are Monday to Saturday 9:30am to 3:30pm and Sunday 10:30am to 2:30pm. Entry is £7.50, and one ticket admits one vehicle of up to eight people, or one walk-in group of up to eight, and covers parking, wheelbarrow use and the photo spots. If your group arrives in two cars, that is two tickets, and the ticket provider adds a small booking fee (Stanhill Farm).
The pumpkins themselves are priced by size: £1.50 for a mini, £2.50 small, £4.50 medium, £7 large and £15 extra large. The headline deal is £39 for a wheelbarrow filled with as many as you can fit while still being able to push it. A barrow of orange pumpkins is fine, but the deal caps you at five of each squash variety and five white pumpkins (Stanhill Farm).
Tickets are sold by arrival slot rather than by the day, seven hourly slots on Saturdays and weekdays with the first at 9.30am and the last at 3.30pm, and five on Sundays from 10.30am to 2.30pm. Each slot is capped at 100 tickets, and a ticket is a carful, so a busy Saturday is 700 cars spread across the day.
Three weeks into sales, nothing is close to full. The farm’s booking system showed 833 tickets gone of 11,100 on 20 September, and the crush is all on one weekend: Sunday 25 October, the Sunday before half term, leads on 168 of 500, and Saturday 24 October follows on 141 of 700. The emptiest dates in the season are the four weekdays just before half term, with two tickets gone on Wednesday 21 October, five on Thursday 22 October and nine on Tuesday 20 October.
Two rules catch people out: tickets are non-refundable even if it rains, and the farm reserves the right to close the patch if the ground gets too wet to be safe. Dogs are not allowed anywhere on the farm, and picnics are not permitted.
What it means for you: with Broadditch’s field resting, Stanhill is the closest full wheelbarrow-and-field patch to Sevenoaks, the cheapest to enter, and the only one open on the first weekend of October. The early weekends get the best pick of the crop, and at £7.50 a car there is little reason to wait. If you want half term, take a weekday: the Tuesday to Thursday before it are all but empty and the Sunday before it is four times busier than anything else.
Broadditch Farm Shop, Southfleet
Broadditch, at Manor Farm on New Barn Road near Southfleet, DA13 9PU, normally runs a three-acre pick-your-own pumpkin field alongside its farm shop. Not this year. The farm grows on rainfall rather than irrigation, and the dry summer has left it expecting around 1,500 pumpkins against a normal crop of 20,000. Rather than open a field that could be picked bare in a weekend, it has cancelled the pick-your-own event for 2026, and the Spooky Trailer Ride that ran from the pumpkin field is resting too (Broadditch Farm Shop).
What survives:
- Pumpkin Carving Workshops, Monday 26 to Thursday 29 October, £7.50 a person with the pumpkin, tools and clearing up included, bookable now
- homegrown pumpkins and squash on sale from the farm shop, open Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm
- an unannounced “something new” for younger visitors that the farm is keeping under wraps
What it means for you: if Broadditch is your family’s regular patch, book Stanhill or Hoo instead this year. The farm is clear this is a one-season break, not a closure, and it expects the field and trailer ride back for Halloween 2027 if the next crop grows normally.
PYO Pumpkins, Beluncle Farm, Hoo
The furthest of the four, at Beluncle Farm on Stoke Road, Hoo, near Rochester, ME3 9LU, and about forty minutes from Sevenoaks on the A2 and M2. It is also the most strictly run: booking is online only, half-hour arrival slots, and the farm is explicit that there is no entry without a ticket (PYO Pumpkins).
Tickets went on sale at 5pm on Friday 28 August, and the booking calendar has since grown by a day. Twelve dates are now bookable, not the eleven the farm first advertised (TicketSource):
- Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October
- Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October
- Friday 23, Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 October
- Tuesday 27, Wednesday 28, Thursday 29 and Friday 30 October
- Saturday 31 October
Eleven of those run half-hour arrival slots from 10am to 3pm. The exception is the new Tuesday 27 October, which opens at 11am and takes its last arrival at 1.30pm, so it is a half day with six slots rather than eleven. Gates shut at 3.30pm whichever day you go (PYO Pumpkins).
Admission is £10 per vehicle for up to seven seats and £15 for a minibus of eight to eighteen, unchanged from 2025, plus TicketSource’s booking fees. Pumpkins, squashes and corn are priced from £1 to £15 each, so a family filling a boot can easily double the entry cost. The ticket is for one named vehicle: if your group arrives in two cars, that is two tickets, and a ticket sitting in the wrong car will not get that car in. There is no walk-in entry except by prior arrangement. Refunds are not given, but you can move a booking to another session up to the day before if space allows (PYO Pumpkins).
Three weeks in, none of it is close to full either. Each full date holds 880 tickets, eleven slots of 80, and the farm’s own booking system showed 537 taken across the season on 20 September, up from 256 on 1 September. Sunday 25 October is the front-runner on 110, followed by Saturday 24 October on 95 and Sunday 18 October on 73. The half-term weekdays are still the ones nobody has claimed: Thursday 29 October had seven tickets gone, Friday 30 October twelve and Wednesday 28 October twenty-one. Halloween itself, Saturday 31 October, had twenty.
What it means for you: worth the drive for a proper field of home-grown pumpkins and squashes in every size and colour. There is no rush at these numbers, but if you want the Sunday before half term, take it now, and if you want half term itself without a crowd, the Thursday and Friday are still wide open.
Spadework, Offham
The one on this list that is not a commercial farm. Spadework is a registered charity on Teston Road in Offham near West Malling, ME19 5NA, which has supported adults with learning and other disabilities for more than three decades. Its trainees choose the varieties and sow the seed in January, and the pumpkin garden opens to the public in October. It has been growing pumpkins since 2018 and put more than forty varieties in the ground in its 2024 season (Spadework).
The 2026 garden opens on Monday 5 October and runs to Saturday 31 October, seven days a week, Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm (Spadework). Those dates are only in the charity’s events calendar: its pick-your-own page is still a blog post from October 2024, so do not read that as this year’s plan.
There is no entry ticket, no time slot and no need to book, and parking is free. You park, walk in, pick what you want and pay at the kiosks, and everything you spend funds the charity’s care services. If you cannot tell a carving pumpkin from a cooking one, there is a Pumpkin Bible at the kiosks that separates them: Crown Prince for the kitchen, Jack O’Lanterns for the doorstep (Spadework). In past seasons the charity has also sold tickets for torchlight picking evenings; nothing of that sort is in the 2026 calendar yet, so ring 01732 870002 if that is what you want.
What it means for you: this is the answer if the idea of paying to park in a field annoys you, or if you have not booked anything and it is the Tuesday of half term. It is the only place on this list open every day of the season, and at twenty minutes it is the nearest field where you pick your own.
Buying a Kent pumpkin without the field
Not everyone wants a wheelbarrow and wellies, and two places near Sevenoaks sell home-grown pumpkins with no mud involved.
Castle Farm at Shoreham, about fifteen minutes north of town, is best known for its lavender, but it grows a wide range of pumpkins and squashes that are hand-cut and sold at the Hop Shop farm shop from September through to November. In autumn they are stacked in trailer-loads in the courtyard, so you choose from a display rather than a field (Castle Farm). If you want cooking squash rather than a carving pumpkin, this is the better shout of the two.
Riverhill Himalayan Gardens, two miles south of Sevenoaks at TN15 0RR, runs a Pumpkin Festival as its end-of-season event, and it is the one date near Sevenoaks you can already put in the diary. The 2026 festival runs from Saturday 17 October to Sunday 1 November, 10am to 4pm. There is a pumpkin hunt around the gardens with sweet treats for finding them all, and a grotto and summer house set up for carving, where you bring your own pumpkin or buy one there and the tools and inspiration are provided. No pre-booking is needed, you pay on arrival at the ticket office, and there is no charge on top of normal admission. At busy times the carving grotto fills up and you may be asked to come back later (Riverhill Himalayan Gardens).
One catch for half-term week: Riverhill closes on Mondays and Tuesdays as usual right through the festival, so within Kent’s half term you can only go on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, plus the weekends either side (Riverhill Himalayan Gardens). The festival then closes the gardens for the year: the 2026 season runs to 1 November, and after that Riverhill shuts for the winter (Riverhill Himalayan Gardens).
Riverhill’s 2026 admission is £14 for an adult, £7.50 for a child aged four and over and £39 for a family, with under-fours free. It opens Wednesday to Sunday and bank holidays, 10am to 5pm, closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and is cashless (Riverhill Himalayan Gardens).
Getting the timing right
- One weekend takes the crush. Three weeks into sales at both ticketed farms, Sunday 25 October and Saturday 24 October, the weekend before half term, are carrying far more bookings than anything else, while half-term week itself sits almost empty. Neither farm is anywhere near selling out.
- Go on a weekday if you can. Kent’s October half term in 2026 runs from Monday 26 to Friday 30 October, so the two weekends either side are the crush (Kent County Council).
- Go early in the month for the best pick. By the last few days the fields are picked over and the biggest carving pumpkins have gone. Stanhill’s 3 and 4 October weekend is the earliest field open this year (Stanhill Farm).
- Wellies, always. Stanhill reserves the right to close the patch if the ground gets too wet to be safe, which tells you what it is like when it is open (Stanhill Farm).
- Take a card. Riverhill is cashless, and most farms now prefer cards in the field.
- No ticket, no plan? Go to Offham. Spadework’s garden is open every day from 5 to 31 October, free to enter and free to park, with nothing to book.
If you are building a full half-term week around this, the October half term guide has the rest of the options, and the Halloween events guide covers the trails at Hever, Knole and elsewhere. For the year-round list, see things to do in Sevenoaks.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the closest pumpkin picking to Sevenoaks? Spadework’s pumpkin garden at Offham is the nearest place you can pick your own, about twenty minutes away, free to enter and open every day from 5 to 31 October 2026 (Spadework). For a full field with a wheelbarrow, Stanhill Farm at Wilmington is closest at roughly twenty-five minutes (Stanhill Farm). Closer still, but picking from a display rather than a field, are Castle Farm’s Hop Shop at Shoreham and Riverhill on the town’s doorstep.
How much does pumpkin picking cost in Kent? Entry is usually charged per car, not per head. Stanhill is charging £7.50 per vehicle of up to eight in 2026 and PYO Pumpkins at Hoo £10 per vehicle of up to seven, with pumpkins on top at roughly £1 to £15 each depending on size (Stanhill Farm; PYO Pumpkins). Spadework at Offham charges nothing to enter and you pay only for what you pick.
Are the Kent pumpkin patches sold out yet? No. On 20 September, three weeks into sales, Stanhill had 833 of 11,100 tickets gone and PYO Pumpkins at Hoo 537 of about 10,200. The one date worth booking early is Sunday 25 October, the Sunday before half term, which is the busiest at both farms; half-term week itself is nearly untouched.
Do I need to book a pumpkin patch in advance? For the field farms, yes. Stanhill says pre-booking is essential, and PYO Pumpkins operates a no ticket, no entry rule with no walk-ins except by prior arrangement (Stanhill Farm; PYO Pumpkins). Spadework, Castle Farm and Riverhill all take walk-ups.
When do Kent pumpkin patches open in 2026? Stanhill opens first, on Saturday 3 October, and sells 17 dates through to 30 October (Stanhill Farm). Spadework’s free garden at Offham follows on Monday 5 October and stays open daily to Saturday 31 October (Spadework). PYO Pumpkins at Hoo is selling twelve dates from 10 to 31 October (TicketSource), and Riverhill’s Pumpkin Festival runs 17 October to 1 November (Riverhill Himalayan Gardens). Broadditch’s field is not opening at all (Broadditch Farm Shop).
Why is Broadditch not doing pumpkin picking in 2026? The drought. Broadditch grows on rainfall alone and expects around 1,500 pumpkins this year instead of its normal 20,000, so it has cancelled the pick-your-own field and the Spooky Trailer Ride rather than open with too few pumpkins to go round. Its carving workshops still run from 26 to 29 October, and it says the field should return in 2027 (Broadditch Farm Shop).
Can I take a dog pumpkin picking? Not at Stanhill, which does not allow dogs anywhere on the farm (Stanhill Farm). Policies vary elsewhere, so check the individual farm’s page before you set off rather than assuming.
What is the best pumpkin patch for young children? Spadework, because there is no ticket, no time slot and no pressure, and the garden is small enough that a three-year-old can walk it. For the wheelbarrow-and-field version, Stanhill sells by hourly arrival slot and caps each one at 100 cars, which keeps the numbers in the field manageable (Stanhill Farm).
Sources
- Stanhill Farm 2026 dates, opening times, £7.50 ticket, pumpkin prices and site rules: Stanhill Farm; arrival slots, slot capacity and tickets sold per date: the farm’s own Beyonk booking system
- PYO Pumpkins at Beluncle Farm, 2026 prices, ticket and site rules: PYO Pumpkins; opening and closing times: FAQs; the twelve on-sale dates, slot times and remaining places: TicketSource
- Broadditch 2026 field cancellation, crop figures, carving workshop dates and prices: Broadditch Farm Shop
- Spadework 2026 pumpkin garden dates, hours, free entry and parking: Spadework events calendar; varieties and the Pumpkin Bible: Spadework; site opening hours: Spadework home
- Castle Farm home-grown pumpkins and squashes: Castle Farm
- Riverhill Pumpkin Festival 2026 dates, times and booking: Riverhill Himalayan Gardens; season end and events calendar: Activities and Events; admission prices and opening days: opening times and prices
- Kent October half term 2026 dates: Kent County Council
Prices, dates and booking rules were checked against each farm’s own website and booking system on 20 September 2026. Ticket numbers move daily. Spadework’s dates come from its events calendar rather than its pick-your-own page, which has not been updated since 2024, so ring 01732 870002 if you are making a special trip.
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