This Chesco wedding venue is using its own backyard veggies and herbs for guests
Willowdale officially transformed into an event space in September, with a reimagined historic barn and renovated farmhouse to host weddings, corporate events, and more.
Kennett Square’s latest wedding venue is tapping into its agricultural lineage, embracing a farm-to-table approach by serving guests vegetables and herbs grown on-site.
Willowdale, nestled in the rolling fields at 115 E. Street Rd. that once housed a working farm and is the site of a steeplechase equestrian course, officially transformed into an event space in September, with a reimagined historic barn and renovated farmhouse to host weddings, corporate events, and more.
And just outside the barn, where couples will dance and clink Champagne flutes through the night, a kitchen garden is growing the staples that will appear on their table.
Its lettuce, plentiful enough for the first time since it was planted in mid-September, was plated for wedding guests this month. Its herbs — lavender, rosemary, basil — are muddled in a glass dispenser to create “meadow water” for guests to sip as they wander through the garden during cocktail hour.
It’s a “zero-mile” farm-to-table approach that taps into the property’s — and Chester County’s — long history of agriculture.
People who like that mission and good food are likely to be their clientele, said Jeffrey A. Miller, the founder and CEO of his eponymous hospitality group, which opened the venue in collaboration with the property’s owners Katherine and Michael Bucklin.
Couples “want a gorgeous venue. They want something, I think, where they feel aligned with the mission of the organization, and then they like good food, typically,” he said. “I think they enjoy touring the garden and seeing what we’re growing and knowing there’s a good chance it’ll be on their plate.”
The venue, which has 70 weddings on the books for 2027 and more than a dozen into 2028, offers indoor and outdoor ceremony spots, with separate cocktail hour lounge and dinner spaces. Guests can stay at the nearby farmhouse, the Yellow House, in eight overnight rooms. Get-ready spaces and suites are available for the wedding parties, too. The capacity is around 270, Miller said. Depending on the season and the day, prices range between $250 to $350 a person, which includes the rental, the food, the liquor, and staff.
Three generations have overseen the 156-acre property. Katherine Bucklin’s grandparents owned and operated it in the 50s, before it changed hands to her father, Dixon Stroud. Stroud added a herd of dairy cows to eventually produce milk and ice cream for his nearby Landhope Farms convenience store. The Bucklins took over operations a few years ago, Michael Bucklin said.
It’s primarily open space, with the convenience store tucked into the southwest corner.
Though the land holds the steeplechase and a hot air balloon festival, among other events, the barn area was an “underutilized structure” on a commercial property, Michael Bucklin said. They wanted to find ways to reuse the space rather than cave to the pressure of development.
“We wanted to continue being part of that solution of keeping open space in our area because there’s so much pressure from development in this area, and so this was kind of one of the big strongholds of open space,” he said.
“I think the pressure will continue to grow on the property over time. But what we’ve created, I think will help offset that financially,” he said. “My children, hopefully, and their children too, will be proud of what what we’ve created here, and can help keep it going.”
Miller, who has more than 40 years of experience in catering, got involved about 10 years ago. It took some time, stalled in part thanks to COVID, before the venue materialized.
He took the Bucklins to another of the hospitality group’s venues, Waterloo Village, in northern New Jersey, where a full-time farmer grows vegetables, fruits, and berries and raises chickens. He wanted to bring something similar to life at Willowdale. And in the past month, that goal has come to life. The venue’s opening officially kicked off in late September, honoring the legacy there: The first event was an 80th birthday party for Stroud himself.
The raised beds will change throughout the year, embracing the climate and the season: Root veggies like onions and carrots in early spring, tomatoes starting in mid-May, alongside peppers or eggplants. Perennials — raspberries, blackberries, asparagus, rhubarb, and kitchen herbs — will have their season or be on offer through the year.
The Bucklins are also reintroducing farm animals. They plan to add chickens, who will have a run between the double fencing of the garden. Their eggs will be used by the kitchen. Mini highland cows and some goats are also calling the grounds home now, Bucklin said.
For the greens, menus are planned a year in advance, but typically they have a salad and use herbs throughout dishes. They call their clients about eight to 10 days out from the event and discuss what the garden is currently producing, and look at the menus to see what they can use.
“If we know we’re going to be doing a herb heavy meal, we’ll just harvest the herbs there for the event. If it’s going to be salad, we’ll just harvest the salad greens. We also might do sort of a farmer’s choice for our vegetables,” he said. “Then everyone gets a taste of the garden, which is really, really nice.”
The garden was designed and installed by Backyard Eats, which works across residential and corporate spaces, helping get gardens off the ground, and maintaining the garden with as heavy, or as light, of a hand as its owner desires.
“A big part of designing the garden was like, OK, aesthetically, what’s going to look nice here all year, plants that stick and stay, and then what beds are we going to use to rotate and create seasonalities?” said Mike Bennett, owner of the company. “Long before the garden was in the ground, I was on the phone with the catering manager talking about like, ‘OK, what do you use? Here’s our favorite things that are kind of true and reliable.’”
It’s a “humbling experience” to work on the scale of a wedding venue, he noted.
“We’re beholden to Mother Nature in a way, and what’s coming at what times,” he said.
But he loves that the venue is combining its heritage with the concept of sustainability.
“It’s just, to me, such a romantic and sustainable idea where people actually experience not only food growing right in front of them and kind of see how it’s all made, but there’s certainly a sustainability aspect to this — a zero-food miles type of setup where this tomato is not coming from across the country,” he said. “I think that’s really nice, in terms of the experience guests are going to have.”
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