It’s around this time of year when we all start looking around for pumpkins and other things we can do to celebrate Halloween. The Winter squash type vegetable is normally hollowed out and designed with a variety of scary images in order to frighten away evil spirits and bring back good luck. They are normally placed outside people’s houses, at their front doors in order to stop bad spirits from entering people’s homes and effecting their way of life.

There are also many festivals with many millions of pumpkins on display to help add to the atmosphere and bring more people in to the spirit of the occasion. One of these includes Tulley’s Pumpkin Festival, near Crawley in West Sussex, welcomed its largest opening-day attendance when gates opened for the 2026 season on Saturday September 19. This event has grown dramatically in recent times thanks to social media where people can post photos and videos of the one and a half million pumpkins and gourds which adorn the site.

This year the farm has made its biggest addition to the festival. Pumpkin Valley is a newly landscaped area featuring streams, ponds, wooden bridges, giant pumpkin sculptures, a Pumpkin Farm House and Hobbit House, surrounded by pumpkins and fall planting.

The new area took months to build and forms part of the continued expansion of an event which began with the simple tradition of families visiting the farm to choose a pumpkin.

Stuart Beare, owner of Tulley’s Farm, said:

“Seeing the Pumpkin Valley full of visitors for the first time on opening day was a really proud moment for everyone here, particularly with a record number of people coming through the gates.

“When we first started growing pumpkins, we could never have imagined what the festival would eventually become. Pumpkin picking is still right at the heart of it, but it has grown into something families travel from all over the country to experience.

“Social media has played a huge part in that. Every fall we see photographs and videos from Tulley’s being shared around the world and it is quite extraordinary to think that all of that starts here on our family farm in West Sussex.

“Pumpkin Valley is the biggest addition we have ever made to the festival. We wanted to create an entirely new part of the event rather than simply adding another display.

“A huge amount of work has gone into the landscaping, buildings, bridges, water and planting. It has been months in the making and seeing families finally exploring it has made all that work worthwhile.”

The increasing number of displays help to make the farm a more popular place for users of Instagram and Tik Tok where they share their photos and create videos for their followers. This helps to build their audience as well as add to the flavour of the time of year. Over thirty photo opportunities have been created through out the displays to give people the chance to get that perfect shot which can be more memorable.

Stuart added:

“There is something very simple at the heart of it. Families come here, choose their pumpkins and spend time together.

“What has changed is everything we have built around that tradition. For a lot of our visitors, coming to Tulley’s has become something they do every fall, and we never take that for granted.

“We have an incredible team who work for months to get the farm ready. Opening weekend is the moment everyone finally gets to see what they have created.”

Tulley’s Pumpkin Festival runs until October 31 2026.

Pumpkin Nights returns after dark

The farm will also open Pumpkin Nights on selected evenings from September 26 to October 31.

Pumpkin Nights runs from 5.30pm to 10pm on selected dates.