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.
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.
The flower opens in May and although not bright and colourful, I think it is very beautiful.
April showers have not reached us here yet only 0.25mm rain so far this month.
The garden keeps moving on and has had lots of attention over the past few weeks so is looking good.
Pear blossom along with the plum and peach are buzzing with bees and the fist apple blossom from the Greensleeves and Belle de Boskoop are now in flower.
I grow something around the base of the old apple trees and on one is white honesty. Looks lovely at this time of year and keeps the weeds off!.
White honesty under the old apple tree
These old apple trees were originally espaliers but over the years the lower arms have died off just leaving the top ones giving the tree a T shape. From this the branches grew up until it was like a row of trees along the T. Since we have been here we have gradually taken these big branches down and now we have a single espalier at about 4 feet from the ground.
The birds have taken advantage of the holes left by the lower arms, blue tits are nesting in it this year.
These are difficult times for us all; those with gardens are so lucky to have that space to go into and see what nature is doing. The odd Brimstone has fluttered by, joining the buzzards aloft and the honey bees resting on the chard.
Earlier in the month late flowering snowdrops were in bloom, these were then replaced with daffodils. Many are still around with other spring bulbs joining in the colour show, including anenome blanda, crocus, and scilla to name a few.
Tulips are in bud now and will open over the next few weeks.
The clematis Constance also provides plenty of colour along with food: chard, purple sprouting broccoli, rhubarb to go with the green of the leeks, the ‘sprouting’ parsnips.
Clematis Alpina ConstanceAngelica in the sunshinePrimrosesRainbow Chard, delicious and decorative
Where to store seeds? Over the years they have been in numerous containers, plastic boxes etc but we do have rather a lot of seeds and could never find the one wanted!
Storing in the house was not an option, no space and too hot some of the time.
In the shed was the only option but we had problems with mice eating the seeds.
For the last five years the seeds have been stored in the storage shed in an old broken freezer, in boxes in one of the drawers, almost alphabetically!
During that time we have been searching for an old metal set of drawers the right size for seed packets.
Last week were found some, on ebay and with the help of our son who knows how to bid on ebay we were successful.
Once cleaned up we were able to fill the drawers. I made laminated sheets to list the alphabet and in sections such as C made individual labels for the many crops in C. Cucumber, cabbage, celeriac, courgette, cauliflower, carrots, calabrese, chard etc.
Very pleased with the purchase so hopefully the mice will not get in, we can find the seeds we want quickly and get rid of the freezer to make more room in the shed.
A few years ago we decided it might be interesting to record all the fruit and vegetables we harvest and see the totals at the end of the year.
This is the total from January to December 2019
Those highlighted in pink were measured in single pieces, the rest were weighed in grams
Sounds a lot of produce, we did not eat it all!.
Although we do eat a lot of it , we give some to friends and family and the rest we sell from a trolley at the bottom of the drive.
The money we raise we give to various charities at the end of the year.
This year we raised over £400 and gave the money raised on the NGS open day plant and produce sales to their charities. We also gave to The Ellen Badger Hospital in Shipston, Carers4carers Kineton, The National Eczema society and the Heritage Seed library Ryton.
We were contacted by BBC local radio, Coventry and Warwickshire, asking if they could come and talk to us live on the Saturday morning gardening show. A bit scary but we said yes so on February 1st Keith Wedgebury arrived with his microphone. We chatted for about 10 mins waiting for our allotted time, 11.30 pm. As it was a very windy day we started in the green house, moving outside towards the end of the interview.
Keith was very good at asking the right questions to get us talking and the whole thing lasted around 7 minutes.
Later in the day we listened to the programme, the Mollie Green show, on BBC sounds.
We realised there was much more we could have said but we did manage to slip in our National Garden Scheme (NGS) Open Garden on 6th and 7th June this year and also events at our local community Orchard (WOT2Grow) . We are heavily involved in this project and were able to advertise the annual Apple Day, October 10th 2020 and the Wassail January 16th 2021.
Quite an experience, we are now back to working in the garden, it has been even windier this week so we were lucky with the timing of the broadcast.
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 treesAconites 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 JanuaryClematis 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.
