Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden

Welcome to the Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden website! We are committed to organic gardening. Using the best practices from the Victorian days (i.e. lots of horse manure) and knowledge gleaned from the Ryton Organic Gardens we have set out to tame our Warwickshire clay. It’s all about sustainability, so as well as organic gardening, we’re always looking to better ways to work with our environment.

On this site you can find out about our history and the projects we are working on. You can come visit the garden and learn about organic gardening. Follow our blog to see what’s on our mind in the garden this month.

For the first 8 years all the work was carried out by just the two of us. Now we have help and are passing on our knowledge to students on the WRAGS (Work and Retrain As a Gardener Scheme).

We also find time to be involved with the WOT2Grow Community Orchard in Tysoe and have planted a 3 acre wood close to Tysoe, just over the border in Oxfordshire with a grant from the Woodland Trust.

Sunday, January 19, 2020

I hate it when people say they have put their garden to bed until spring.

The garden never completely shuts down over winter some plants die down and retreat underground until spring, decidious trees loose their leaves and go to sleep until spring. Dead plant heads if left in the garden over winter provide food for birds and shelter for many small insects, also providing architectural interest in the garden.

While all this is going on, other plants in the garden are putting on their show.

The bulbs are coming through and in January we see the yellow of aconites, the white and many varied green marks of the snowdrops.

Snowdrops under the hawthorn trees
Aconites under the pear tree

Also in flower in the garden in January are the yellow flowered Mahonia, the evergreen clematis, “Freckles”,winter jasmine and lots of hellibores. The new flowers come before the leaves on the hellibores so cut last years old leaves off at ground level just before the new flower shoots emerge and you can see them in their full glory.

Mahonia flowers in January
Clematis freckles

Other colours in the garden now are the yellow winter jasmine, the primrose and primula and not forgetting all the shades of green from evergreen bushes and shrubs as well as the ferns.

Ferns in January

October colour

I love this time of year for all the colour in the garden and countryside. The colours are actually always in the leaves but can not be seen...