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.

Thursday, September 2, 2021

August

 Some of my favourites in the garden in August are:

On the left, Crinum, these huge bulbs first emerge in early spring and the leaves are ravaged by the frosts, slugs and mice. However they always survive and in August the flower spikes erupt and the lovely white flowers (usually 4 on each spike) open and last for around 4 weeks.

Next to the crinum is my new David Austin rose called Tottering by Gently.

Another favourite at the moment is agapanthus, I planted these along the edge of the patio.

They have grown about a metre tall and provide the screening I had hoped that gives the seating area a cosy enclosed feel during the summer months.

Then there is the Aeonium Zwartkop. I bought a cutting at an open garden I visited in 2010. Since then I have taken dozens of cuttings and have numerous pots of them. They go into an unheated greenhouse over winter but come out when all frosts are gone and spend the summer in the sunshine (and rain).

This one I am very pleased with and is 4 separate cuttings in one pot.

Of course the other highlight of the month is the fruit and vegetable we are harvesting, beans, peas, cabbage, edamame, courgette, cabbage, cucumber, tomatoes, figs, currants, peaches, apples, raspberries, blueberries and much more.

February 2024

 What a wet and soggy month. Very few days have been dry enough to do any work on the soil, but we have managed to prune all the fruit trees...