National Gardening Week: What’s growing in our kitchen garden?

Our hotel may be on pause for now but the fresh spring life in our beautiful garden is continuing to thrive. With all the consecutive days of beautiful weather we’ve experienced recently, our kitchen garden is growing with great enthusiasm and our gardener Jerry has been as busy as ever tending to all the new seasonal fruits, vegetables and herbs.

The fresh produce we grow and hand-pick from our kitchen garden takes pride of place on our menus in The Dining Room, renowned for its locally sourced, seasonally inspired dishes. Spring is a particularly busy time for vegetable growing; a time to prepare and begin sowing seeds. Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, aubergine and lettuce are starting to grow in abundance in our kitchen garden, along with fresh spring onions and French climbing beans (heritage). We’re also currently seeing a lovely mix of brassicas such as coloured radishes, rocket, pak choi and turnips, as well as a healthy amount of colourful roots including beetroot, chantenay carrots, coloured carrots and squashes. And, of course, not forgetting our herb garden – what would our tomato soups and summer salads be without our beautiful fresh basil!

For the freshest seasonal food possible, sourcing locally is always the best option – the more local it is, the less time it has spent being transported and the more nutrients and vitamins it’s likely to have retained. And by cutting out energy used in transportation also helps to reduce our carbon footprint, too.  

If you’re considering starting your own kitchen garden at home, herbs are a great place to start. Rosemary, sage, thyme and chives are simple to grow and make a delicious addition to most dishes. Wild garlic and rhubarb are also good choices for beginners as they’re hardy, very easy to grow and thrive in British cool climate (particularly rhubarb). 

Before you start planting, remember to do a little research to decide what plants are best suited to your garden’s growing conditions. After all, it’s much better to have produce that can grow and thrive by itself without intervention than having to constantly change and manipulate their environment to help them grow.

If you’d like to hear a little more about our kitchen garden and all our latest news and updates, you can sign up to our VIP mailing list here.