Visiting the Denver Botanic Gardens Pumpkin Festival in 2024
The Pumpkin Festival is held by the Denver Botanic Gardens at their Chatfield Farms location during the first couple of weeks of October. Here you can pick your own pumpkins, get lost in the corn maze, enjoy live music and food trucks, and take a festive wagon ride. This year we went on an unseasonably warm Saturday and had a great time!
Tickets
The main thing to note about the Pumpkin Festival is that you need to buy tickets in advance. Tickets were $18 per adult this year and went on sale to the general public on August 26 (and a few days earlier for garden members) so I recommend checking the Denver Botanic Gardens site in early August to find the exact day for next year.
It gets pretty crowded so we like to get tickets for when it opens at 9am.
Transportation and Parking
I talked about this a bit in my post on the Lavender Festival, but Chatfield Farms is pretty far away from Denver proper. There is no direct public transit to it so you're going to have to either drive or get a Lyft/Uber.
There is some accessible parking available, but you'll most likely be parking in the big grassy field outside of the gardens. So don't drive your lowrider to the Pumpkin Festival.
Pumpkin Patch
The patch itself has a variety of medium to large sized pumpkins and gourds available. The prices ranged from $1-2 for the tiniest of pumpkins (I found it difficult to even find these), $5-8 for a medium sized, and $10-12 for large ones.
They recommend bringing a wagon to carry them and I wish we had because our Thule bike trailer got a bit crowded between the kid and the pumpkin.
Food Trucks
My favorite part of these events tends to be the food trucks. This time we got empanadas from the Lazo Empanadas truck. We tried the ground beef, barbecue chicken, and spinach and cheese flavors. They were all delicious, but of the three my favorite was the spinach and cheese.
I should have taken a picture of the food itself but we ate them too quickly. 😅
They also had cheesesteak trucks, donut trucks, beer trucks, pizza trucks, you name it. It all looked good, but the empanadas called to us for some reason.
Corn Maze
We didn't do the corn maze this year. It was too hot and dusty out to wander around in the corn with a 1-year-old. So no opinions. 😁 Last year we did it though and it was pretty cool! Here's a few pictures from 2023 to give you a sense of what it's like.
Chatfield Farms Corn Maze (2023)
New Construction
Construction at Denver Botanic Gardens Chatfield Farms
The most exciting thing for me was neither the pumpkins nor the food this time, but some new construction! We last visited the farm for the Lavender Festival in July and none of this was built (they had begun some digging at that time, though). It looked to be a new building near the entrance and some much needed restrooms in the back.
So I did some research and learned about the Chatfield Farms Master Development Plan. Looks like these buildings are just the start and eventually there will be an amphitheater and even a restaurant. We love coming to Chatfield Farms and can't wait to see it develop further.
Tips and Advice
I don't have much in the way of tips apart from:
- Get to the Pumpkin Festival early
- Bring sunscreen and water
- Bring a wagon or cart to carry your pumpkins during the event and back to your car
Like I mentioned earlier, I wish we had brought a wagon and a baby carrier (either our Osprey or Tush Baby) instead of the Thule Chariot. The Thule did its job fine, but was just a bit limiting when it came to lugging both a pumpkin and a kid around.
Other than that, pretty typical Colorado outdoor event advice. The Pumpkin Festival is pretty fun and I definitely recommend checking it out.