This year’s annual Home and Garden Festival was a blooming success, drawing 12,000 to 15,000 visitors to Chestnut Hill’s Germantown Avenue on Sunday – and sending business owners and vendors home feeling more than happy. 

“A lot of vendors sold almost everything they had. And many businesses on the Avenue also had a great day,” said Courtney O’Neill, executive director of the Chestnut Hill Business Association, which hosts the event. 

This year’s family-friendly event drew 277 vendors, a 30 percent jump over last year – which, with 213 vendors, was the first festival after COVID.

Of particular note this year was a new level of activity further down the Avenue, all the way to where the street was closed to traffic at Willow Grove. In past years, foot traffic tended to peter out at that end of the festival. 

“We heard from some businesses that had some concerns about that, put some thought into it, and decided to move the music stage that normally would have been across from the fresh market further down (close to Abington Avenue), and that added a lot more excitement to that end of the festival,” O’Neill said. “That seemed to make a big difference in drawing more of the crowd down the hill.”

The festival, founded in 1997 to promote Chestnut Hill as a thriving hub for home and garden enthusiasts, has grown in both size and popularity – drawing entrepreneurs as well as artists and craft people to the Avenue. It’s a popular destination for anyone shopping for gifts of all kinds, as well as for those who are looking for good food, nice music, and a chance to enjoy a beautiful spring day in a crowd.