Hindsight is a wonderful thing
Mike Morgan, of Llansantff raed Court Hotel, near Abergavenny, launches his new regular column ‘Digging for Victory’ which will tell of his on-going batt le to tame a historic walled garden in the grounds of the hotel...
I
t was a beautiful May morning at the end of the last century. As I slowly drove past the dollhouse sized St Bridget’s Church and crested the brow
of the hill, I caught sight of the house and its warm stone unfolding in front of me, but then away to the right, a tantalising glimpse of a warm 10 ft high brick wall hinting at what was hidden within. Fast forward a couple of months to September
1997, and having now signed on the dotted line I found myself looking at an acre of 12 foot high brambles, no sign of the warm brick wall that had been so instrumental in me signing over the family silver. On refl ection ... If I jumped up and down I could just about
see the top of what was clearly the walls of a stunning, but now rather disheveled, Victorian kitchen garden. First things fi rst, and with renewed enthusiasm, I resolved that this was going to need some seriously heavy machinery to deal with the occupying brambles. Once I had mastered my trusty Case tractor,
we were able to venture into the centre of the jungle, where, encouragingly, we found the remains of an old well, and after some further judicious thrashing, burning and strimming, we rediscovered the walls, and the now forlorn looking remains of what could have been a huge greenhouse. The clues were there, some shattered glass, some intriguing rusty metalwork, rotten white washed wooden batons and some old tools. It was like a bad episode of Time Team. A bit of further digging revealed the exquisite wrought iron gates and their now rotten oak fence and gateposts, we found old clay pots, metal ties in the walls and fruit cage remains. The bad news was that the thing we found most of was builders rubble, old cables, long since solidifi ed bags of cement, shattered glass and disintegrating concrete blocks, all of which would need to be cleared before we could plant so much as a wellington boot.
52 As the years passed, and budget allowed, the
garden was slowly cleared, until, fi nally in 2009 a ‘plan’ emerged. We used ‘Old Faithful’, the trusty tractor and plough initially and started to form the vegetable beds. Advice from those that know much better than I, including the RHS, suggested we needed a fi ve, possibly six, fi gure budget to restore the walled garden to its former glory, it felt like this was to be a long term project... a very long term project, but I like a challenge. Fast forward again, the garden, now cleared and grassed, began to hint at its true potential. A sunny sheltered spot where we could not only produce barrow loads of fresh, and most crucially, delicious vegetables, for our growing hotel and restaurant business, but provide a quiet contemplative corner for guests to read a novel, enjoy a cuppa or soak up the sun. The economics of the capital investment, and the on going cost of tending to over 1500 square metres of vegetable beds, fruit trees and salads under glass make it hard to justify fi nancially, but as soon as you taste the results, its all very much worth while.
Even poking optimistically through the recent
snow are hardy winter roots, celeriac, turnip and honey sweet parsnips, the polytunnels still give up fresh greens and exotic salad leaves throughout the winter, and as soon as the rain stops we’ll set about planting. The weather has slowed progress on our
winter construction project of our new lean to greenhouse. It was rescued from Broadlands in Hampshire,
used to belong to Lord Mountbatten, and is quite the biggest set of mechano I have ever seen. Its 25m long, 4m high and 5m wide… but more of that next month.
Some facts and fi gures
• 1 acre of walled garden • 10 vegetable beds of 25 metres by 4 metres
• 29 skips full of rubble, stones and broken glass • 200 asparagus crowns • 20 metres of polytunnels • 22 fruit trees
• 1 huge glasshouse • Lots of elbow grease
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88