Skip to main content

Al Ru Farm Spring Picnic, Sampson Flat, South Australia

Al Ru Farm Lilly Garden.
Al Ru Farm Lilly Garden.

When my partner, Enigma, pitched going on a picnic where you paid for a food hamper to be provided, I thought we were just going to a very nice, well manicured park. 

Al Ru Farm (named after the owners Alan and Ruth Irving) is an actual private farm but, at the center, is ten acres of well maintained gardens, a large barn converted into a function/reception room, and three bed and breakfast homes.

Located between the Barossa Valley and the Adelaide hills, at Sampson Flat, it provides a relaxing rural/garden experience without having to travel too far from suburbia. Typically the gardens and function rooms have been used as an ideal setting for weddings but the farm holds other events throughout the year, such as their Spring Picnic (held in November - which you have to book in order to receive your food hamper).

Overview of the main building and Garden Bar area on the day of the Spring Picnic.
Overview of the main building and Garden Bar area on the day of the Spring Picnic.

Our picnic box/hamper.
More of a picnic box than a hamper but
still very nice and more than enough for two.
BYO picnic blanket or sit at one of the tables in the garden bar (as we did) where wine, coffee, soft drink, and ice-cream cones could also be purchased. I enjoyed a coffee with our hamper, and Enigma and I both enjoyed some quality chocolate ice-cream.

The gardens themselves have plenty of paths to explore leading to quiet corners and themed garden areas. While we ate in the garden bar where a band was playing 'ragtime' tunes, we could've easily retreated to some where with fewer people.

That said the garden never felt over crowded. Clearly the organizers know the venue's capacity so that there's still a good sized number of attendees without anyone really getting in the way of each other.

The sun garden.
Not sure what this garden was called so I'm guessing maybe, the Sun Garden?

Exploring the gardens was fun walk. Definitely plenty of places to take photos for your social media (or blogs). I think we spent maybe around an hour casually exploring the gardens, and taking photos, before we felt we'd seen most of it.

On the way out we stopped to take a picture of the low flying plane. There's no explanation I could see as to why this is in the farm's front field but there is a picture of Alan in front of a similar but much newer plane on their website so... maybe?

Low flying plane (on a pole) in the front field.
Watch out for low flying planes coming up the driveway!

Al Ru Farm isn't generally open to the public to just drop by but you can arrange a garden tour visit through their website or by booking for one of their events - be notified of upcoming events through their email newsletter.

Definitely worth a visit if you're a garden lover, but also just a nice setting for a picnic lunch. 

Comments

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

Movie Review: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) *No Spoilers*

T his is another film that I would have liked to have seen in a theatre but, for whatever reason, didn't get to. Having now seen  Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga  (2024) almost a year later I'm glad I didn't. Which is not to say it's bad. Like its predecessor Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), which I enjoyed in a cinema immensely, this film would definitely benefit from being on a big screen for the spectacle and epic visuals of it all.  However unlike its predecessor there is so much going on, with back and forth between the waring parties, and Furiosa's story as well, you can't just sit back and kind of enjoy the ride. It's like writer/director, George Miller, wanted to cram in as many of his ideas as possible for the post apocalyptic world of Mad Max, because it's not likely he'll make another one, but whoever does, has a rich, detailed world of on screen source material to draw upon. The story begins with young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) and her journey from the ...

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices.  My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe?  Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 3, 4, and 5 - Definitely Seeing Progress

TET, Episode 5 Heelflip attempt. C ontinuing my ten part series of Second Sunday Skateboard sessions , the series where I'm attempting to master all seven basic skateboarding tricks in Braille Skateboarding's Skateboarding Made Simple Volume One , over twenty weeks (or ten fortnights).  Each episode is a short Sunday check in to show where I'm at after each two week period of practicing. Generally I aim for at least an hour practice session every second day if weather or my work schedule permits. These are the links to Episode One and Episode Two  should you feel the need to see where I started.  I'm not a complete newbie, having been a relatively hardcore skater through the late eighties and early nineties, however I was mostly a mini ramp and curb skater, and never really maintained my skills beyond riding and ollies.  The explosion of council built concrete parks came a decade too late for me to maintain my mini ramp skills. Once we closed our own skate park in ...

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - The Australian Democrats (Please Like Us Again) and The Greens

Image: Reve AI T here's not much to be said about the current Australian Democrats other than in 2025 Australian election, in May, they'll be out there hoping they win a seat... any seat... 'please like us again!' The Australian Democrats For just over two decades, from the late seventies onward, the Australian Democrats were the third most important party in the Federal government (if you don't count the National party since they've been on that coalition ticket with the Liberals for as long as I can remember). In fact, once I moved away from the Labor party, they were my top pick until the party slowly imploded in the early 2000's from a series of unfortunate events like leaders defecting to other parties, and a highly publicised incident of drunkenness, bullying, and abuse from a male party leader to a female colleague. It's been two decades since then (and that guy's with the Greens now)... please like us again! That aside, the party is still t...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - Highlighting Some Minor Parties and Independents

W hile I am all for voting for minor parties and independent candidates, it can be concerning if too many of them win their seats. When independents hold the balance of power it gives them a lot of leverage to get their own policy ideas inserted into the mix. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing but it can slow everything down, and even sabotage policies and promises, that the government won the election with. It requires the government to work harder, and possibly make compromises, to get their policies implemented. Essentially they do what Australian pollical legend, and founder of The Australian Democrats, Senator Don Chipp, expounded in such simple terms, "keep the bastards honest." While I can't list and write about every independent and minor party candidate I can highlight a few, who already hold seats in parliament, and will no doubt be looking to hold onto them in 2025. The Conservatives Bob Katter - Katter's Australian Party There's a joke in the ...