The Patch MK

About

The Patch MK is a working farm with a difference just outside Milton Keynes. It has something for everyone from beautiful flower fields with wildflowers and Sunflowers where parents or grandparents can sit with a coffee and relax and even pick their own flowers to take home.

For kids and teens, there are musical corn mazes, spinning tunnels, anti-gravity rooms made out of old farm materials as well as fields of sunflowers and wildflowers to play in and pick.

Husband and wife team Joe and Ros Gurney are working farmers with a difference. 5 years ago they started to open up their farm to visitors. They wanted to share all the things the countryside has to offer, especially to those living in more urban areas. They started as a Pumpkin Patch which is still hugely popular and have grown into offering families rustic adventures in the middle of the Buckinghamshire countryside.

Ros says: "Our farm is a fully interactive family experience run by our family. We have two children who are 8 and 10. The Patch MK is all about opening up our farm for everyone to enjoy. We want families to have good old-fashioned fun here and all of it is sensory. For example, Our musical maze, which is brilliant for young children, has instruments throughout the maze built by Hampshire percussionists. They get to try all the instruments and learn about how they make the sounds they do."

Husband Joe says he is particularly proud of all the work that has gone into the new Labyrinth of Illusions maize maze, where one of their farm engineers who normally services tractors has built a shrinking room copied from the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film which then pops you out into another maze which caters more for older children and adults. "We also have an anti-gravity room which is a 20 ft long room built on a 20-degree tilt and a 9ft vortex spinning tunnel, built in America and shipped over, as well as a 9ft wide spinning tunnel which gives you the feeling of being turned upside down. However, a lot of the structures you will see in the Maize Mazes are made from old farm machinery and farm materials."

The Gurneys Patch MK is all about ensuring children can be in the open air, explore and have new experiences in a safe rural environment. Ros says that it fosters independence in the children and everyone can get involved in jumping on the bale tower and playing with the duck racing machine, or staying out of the sun in the undercover 40ft sandpit. For parents, there is also the chance to chill out and have coffee and cake amongst the wildflowers and sunflowers.

Joe says: "We knew we wanted to offer a family day out with a difference and getting kids into the open air and interacting with the countryside around them in our maize mazes and being amongst the flowers gets them using their senses again. It shows them there is a fun life beyond screens all around us and opens their minds to exploration and adventure."