Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden: The Duchess of Edinburgh

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.

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

The Duchess of Edinburgh

I find this a most intriguing and fascinating flower.

Clematis Duchess of Edinburgh. A deciduous plant so not a pretty sight in winter (a tangle of brown sticks!) But by March the leaves are beginning to unfurl. Then flower buds appear and are amazing.

The bud itself is tightly packed curled up inside itself surrounded by 6 bracts on long stems, which gradually open out to give a sputnik type appearance.