The Potager at Scampston Hall

It’s been a while since our weekend in Malton and I’ve been meaning to share more from our visit to the Walled Gardens and Parkland at Scampston Hall. I took many photos (no surprise there) and so I’ll be sharing a series of posts from our visit finally - it’s a great place to visit with a fab cafe too, so if you’re close by and considering a visit, then definitely go.

The Walled Garden was designed by Piet Oudolf in 1999, and while Oudolf is often now imitated this garden remains his largest private commission in the UK. There are twelve sections to the walled garden, and you know how much I love a potager, or a vegetable garden, so that’s where we’re starting.

Along with the cut flower garden, the vegetable garden supplies the house and cafe with a range of fresh flowers and vegetables. As with any productive garden the planting schemes change regularly, but isn’t that what we love about gardens?

Any gate inviting you to come in in a garden is a welcome sight, and this one especially so with it’s modern block design by local craftsman Peter Coates. I seem to have cut my photo off though, so it’s not easy to see that it contains the word Yat, which is the Yorkshire dialect for gate. A gate with meaning, as well as good looks - yes, I’m definitely coming in!

Wow. I so love a productive garden, and when we visited in September many veg plots are at their peak, so it’s a great time to visit.

Just look at that Ruby Chard, I’d forgotten how beautiful and structural they can be - I definitely want these in my garden, even though they’re one of the veg that MOH has been known to turn his nose up at, though thinking again that could be due to the sheer volume of chard we grew when we had our allotment!

I found two of my favourite pumpkins here too, this Turks Turban and the bluer skinned Crown Prince. The third that I’d add to my favourite pumpkin list is the Red Kuri or Onion Squash which I have managed to grow in my previous garden. I’m not sure if I’ll find a space for pumpkins here - they ramble a lot - but if I can I will.

There’s nothing better than fresh sweetcorn on the cob is there, and none can be fresher than these - I can’t wait for the local sweetcorn this year, though there’s a good few months before I’ll see these in the farm shops, let’s hope there’s plenty of sun this summer to make them extra sweet.

I was pleased to see the red chicory growing in a Yorkshire garden - we’re a bit further south, so by rights that means we should be able to grow them too. I love their colour and structure, and I also love them in a blue cheese risotto which MOH makes - it’s the best flavoured risotto, most I can give or take but this one I’ll always have, thank you very much. Many years back I remember we scoured our part of South London for a red chicory without a huge amount of success, but times have changed and I see them much more often now, but to grow my own - and have that risotto almost on tap - now that would be the dream.

I’m also a sucker for photographing cabbages with their characterful, and clearly very tasty, nibbled leaves. I’ve long given up on my long held dream of growing many varieties of cabbages in perfectly straight rows (as once seen at the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall), and would settle for a couple of slightly less nibbled ones that could end up in the kitchen at some point!

The Walled Garden has so much more to see, and not everything that you’d expect to see so look out for further posts in the coming weeks to see what else this fantastic space has to offer.

A winter visit to the Wisley veg plot

Whenever we go to RHS Wisley there’s always a couple of places that are on my “must visit” list. The first of these is the vegetable garden for some inspiration, but also to marvel at how ordered and orderly their vegetables grow. For a long time I’ve hankered over growing brassicas in rows, but of course it never quite works out that way. Usually I beat myself up about it for a bit, then I remember that I’m growing vegetables on a much smaller scale, both in terms of space and time and likely number of seedlings too - though at times I think I can out-rival anyone on that!

So I end up forgiving myself, but the admiration rightly remains. So when we visited the Giant Houseplants Takeover at the start of February, I also engineered our route around the garden to include a stop off here. MOH now feigns mock surprise, which of course is no surprise at all.

The artichoke leaves and plants are always so structural and dramatic, but they take up a lot of room. We always had plans to move the one on our now-given-up allotment plot, but never got to it before it started growing, up and through the crab apple tree. They’d make a great ‘screening’ plant if you had a plot large enough in your garden, as they’d be a great way to transition from your garden to veg plot, working well in both areas of the garden. I must remember this for when/if I get the opportunity for a veg plot in the garden.

Do you see what I mean about the orderliness? But also the size. The colours of the ruby and yellow chard were welcome though. They’re also great plants to grow, though MOH isn’t so keen on eating them which is a bit of a downside. Because really, if you’re not going to eat what you grow there’s really very little point, and if there’s only one of you eating your way through a glut that could be quite dull indeed.

I always like to peer into the greenhouses and netted cages as much as I can. This time I remembered that camera trick, which I learnt on my visit to the Orbit in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park - yes the one where I went down the huge, huge slide and actually wondered if I’d survive. The ‘trick’ which makes a lot of sense is to put your phone (all my photos on the blog now days are taken with my phone camera) right up against the netting, and the result is a pretty clear picture, like the sprouts above.

I hadn’t actually got into the netted cage, which with a proper camera might have been my only option, and one that probably would have got me thrown out. Now imagine having to explain that.

This final picture is a great burst of colour, but also a reminder to me to not be bound by ‘norms’ on what can be grown in pots and containers. There were several different shaped pots with radicchio in, which looked great and I’m sure, when they get to the table, will taste great too. The options should be endless, and it’s good to remind myself of these as I’ve those new pots around the greenhouse which i plan on making work hard this year, I’m just not sure with what!

The parterre at Helmingham Hall

We’re getting about a bit this week with the posts I’m sharing, so in between quick visits to Lisbon on Tuesday and Italy tomorrow, today we’re somewhere a little closer to home and have landed in Suffolk. In the parterre at Helmingham Hall to be precise. It’s a great garden to visit, another independent garden where you’re never quite sure what you’re going to find.

We visited during our Suffolk break, and I was surprised to see I’ve only shared a single post from our visit so far, and if you’re a fan of knot gardens, then this is worth a visit if you’re in the area. I originally planned to share photos from the Potager, but somehow my fingers had other ideas, but who am I to argue?

While first off this garden might look very traditional, and its choice of plants - box hedging and santolina, it’s not quite as traditional as you’d expect. It’s in good company as that’s the combination used in the formal gardens of Chenonceau too, though the santolina (the light coloured plant) was more densely planted in Suffolk, which brought a bolder ‘stripe’ to the parterre.

The other less traditional thing, but gorgeously so, are these pink cosmos which on our visit were used in the central bed.

From a distance, I assumed they were roses, so it was quite a discovery when I got close enough. While I’m converting to roses, i think because these weren’t roses, it was even more of an exciting discovery. It’s quirks like this, or the plant you don’t expect to see that makes a garden a garden and not a forumaic reproduction of what we know works.

It’s a great space, calming and viewable from the house across the moat - which if I’ve not mentioned before is pretty and fascinating, though sadly not open, but I mean, it has a moat. And surely that means you can imagine anything you like about the place and the reality would never match up to it.

The other thing this garden has, which appeals to me, is those gates which lead to the Potager. So soon, I’ll share more of what’s behind them as I’m rather partial to those too, as i discovered at Cheverny.