The pleasures of being a kitchen gardener

To be a kitchen gardener has been a whole new experience for me, one that I relish every second of. Upon arrival I walked out to the kitchen garden, where I was met with what seemed like an endless amount of empty beds. I wondered how many people would possibly be eating the fruit and vegetables. It was then that I found out there were annuals to be sown and many of the beds had dormant perennials in them. Foolish me. So I immediately got to sowing seeds in the greenhouse. From annuals such as Cosmo bipinnatus 'Picotee' ,to vegetables such as Artichoke F1 'Amethyst', to the enchanting perrenial Meconopsis betonicifolia. For awhile the cloches were my only friends out there, who waited for the rhubarb to push their tops off from underneath. Soon the perennials awoke from their beds to introduce themselves. The roller coaster ride of spring had started, and soon enough a barrage of blooms were flying past me. The first to introduce herself was Pyrus communis 'Comtesse de Paris', and it was then I started to feel at home.
With the arrival of spring came more sun, which helped the lettuce seedlings gather together in straight lines so they could each get a turn in the spotlight. And more soon followed. If only all plants were so obedient... some prefer just to run everywhere..Fennel took off, and Broad beans showed up every week with Dill , who worked together to fight off black fly. The potatoes are a shy bunch now, with each time being afraid of exposing too much, thus pulling up more of the soil around to protect themselves. What could they have to hide...

It seemed like overnight most of spring flew by and the vegetables just took off. Filling in nicely, and climbing appropriately up their designated pea sticks.

A colorful bunch they were. Then the perennials showed up, stealing some of the spotlight. And Petal, who always knows how to get attention.

Other cast members include, mustard greens meshing nicely with mangold.

Peas, who slowly work their way up the pea sticks.

Cos lettuce 'Marshall' coinciding with Lettuce 'Green Oakleaf'.

A lovely mix of greens and the shocking colors of the red currants, can't quite hold the attention when the perennial blooms have started to take over. The poppies and foxgloves harmonized well with the peonies. The constant hum of the bees helps me realize I am not the only one finding pleasure in the kitchen garden.

It's a pleasure to witness the whole cycle and details of a plants life.

Papaver sommniferum

Or how colors can harmonize or contrast with each other, or how the evening light changes the garden.

The kitchen garden is chaos held within the hedges of Fagus sylvatica.

Sweet William.... Papaver nudicaule, Papaver sommniferum and Papaver rhoeas. While it is always nice to stand back and admire, it is always enjoyable to harvest. A basket stocked full of greens, rhubarb, carrots, radishes, and peony and dianthus flowers to be taken to the house.

What is sweeter than a bowl of harvested red currants...

As a kitchen gardener, it is enjoyable to deal with plants on every level; sowing seeds, taking cuttings, collecting seed, vegetables, annuals, soft fruits, hard fruits, trees, annuals, and perennials. The wave of work that is done there puts a smile on my face each day, to ride the line between order and chaos is a welcome challenge.

West Dean

There are so many things I want to share with what I am seeing, doing and learning but find it difficult to really get all of this information out. A lot of driving has been happening to visit different gardens during my time off from a busy work week that I find myself short on time to sit in front of the computer. The summer is different here too because not only is the weather wonderful here but the sun rises at 4:30 am and it doesn't really get dark until 10- 10:15pm. So if the sun is out, I am usually outside..........



The other week I was speaking with a fellow gardener while I was taking some Foxgloves, Digitalis purpurea, out of one of the garden beds. We started talking about how these plants are used in making certain heart medicines. Louise started to tell me about how back in the yesteryear's people would take leaves off the plant and chew them to self medicate their heart problems. -I must say that these plants are poisonous.... so please, I don't want anyone to hurt themselves...... just say no!- So I was told that one of the side affects of taking too much of these leaves was to have your sight go yellow. Louise said that Van Gogh, the painter, was known for having some heart ailments and took Digitalis leaves; maybe to the point of poisoning himself and researchers believe that this what might have been the cause of his "yellow period". These are the odd facts about plants and history that make sense.



Here is a more interesting in depth look at this:



www.psych.ucalgary.ca/PACE/VA-Lab/AVDE-Website/VanGogh.html







So while there are no sunflowers in this field I did find it inspirational enough to pull the car over and take a shot of while on my way to West Dean in Chichester, West Sussex. It is about a two hour drive west of Great Dixter. West Dean was the home to a man named Edward James, who was born into a privileged life and found himself to be a huge supporter of the arts, specifically Surrealism. He supported painters by purchasing their work (Dali and Magritte to name a few), set up a publishing house to publish the works of poets, and helped finance some ballet specifically Balanchine productions. He also created a large garden in Mexico that you might be familiar with called Xilitla, which has large temples and staircases running through the jungle and is completely covered in vines and ferns. He loved trees and plants and after he passed away he was buried in the Arboretum that is at West Dean. He was a real eccentric man and was a poet and writer himself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_James

West Dean is now a school for artists, craftspeople, conservators and restorers and is home to an amazing walled garden where there technique is almost next to none. The gardens are run by Jim Auckland and Sarah Wain, husband and wife, who turned the Victorian walled gardens around from decay into the glorious splendor that they are today. The fruit and vegetable gardens here are immaculate and the attention to detail in the way they grow everything is exactly how you would like to know that your food is being grown.
Here is inside the grapevine glasshouse, where the vines are trained up against the glass roof which will then let the bunches of grapes hang down once they start to mature. Notice how clean and orderly the glasshouse is.....
Here is a closeup of some of the vines. Note how they are all growing from one plant, and the thickness of the trunk.
Here is the Nectarine house where it is espaliered against the walls .

Here in the melon house, great precautions are taken against splashing water onto the plant to prevent foliar diseases. Note the raised level of the soil beds to help with quick drainage and how the empty plastic pots are used, pushed slightly into the soil, to help get water to the roots of the plant without splashing soil upwards again.

Outside in the walled garden you will see the orchard where all sorts of hard fruits such as pears and apples are grown. All of the trees are trained to grow in different shapes such as pyramids and circular forms that would help with air circulation to prevent disease and to make it easier to harvest fruit from.

Here is one of the fruit storage houses where they would put their harvests to keep for months after. They would line these shelves with apples and pears.

There were a dozen or so glasshouses in the walled garden which were surrounded by cutting gardens in one area. One of the large fig tree of cultivar 'Brown Turkey' in the glass house, again beautifully displayed, with their cacti and succulent collection on show outside.

Inside one of the many Victorian glasshouses, with a collection of many potted plants such as begonias, nepanthes, ferns and such. Each plant had gravel at the top of the soil level to help with watering, to help prevent the harboring and spread of disease.

Look how clean it is everywhere, the benches, the plants, the pots!! Nancy, who was my teacher in all things greenhouse related at school, would have been proud........

The lovely Pepper house, where every type you could imagine was grown. The aroma in here was so strong due to the heat of the sun. If you love peppers then look no further. They have a huge chili pepper festival here every year.

Here is one of the many vegetable beds filled with every type of Brassica possible. There were some heads of cabbage that were 2x the size of a basketball.

See.....

In a corner of the vegetable garden there was rhubarb being blanched (say it with me Liz!) in their cloches.

The view from the walled garden looking towards the glasshouses with the rolling hills beyond, which is where the arboretum was started.

These fields were at the base of the arboretum where there were sheep grazing everywhere.
One of the many picturesque bridges on the estate.
There was a road that led away from the school up into the rolling hills on footpaths, which took you through sheep pastures up to a 40 acre arboretum. It was full of exceptional trees and I saw a grove of Monkey puzzles which is always fun but my camera battery ran out of juice. It was a good thing though because now with digital cameras, we spend so much time taking photos that it is difficult to sometimes put them down and enjoy the moment rather than trying to capture it. And enjoy it I did.....