From Seed to Service. Fresh Ingredients from Our Kitchen Garden

Kitchen garden – definitely  work in progress – definitely always something to learn – definitely rewarding.

The more we plant, the more we experiment with what works here, in our microclimate, the more we know that!

It’s more than a joy; our garden has given us over Spring and high Summer so many ingredients which can be harvested in moments – could not be more fresh –  by our chefs to bring added touches of flavour and pleasure from a dish, some for now, some for pleasures to come, using the traditional, homely art of preserving:

• mirabelles fresh from the tree; the first gathering preserved already, used on the tasting menu for the pre dessert 
• some for our new Summer local tomato dish 
• on the same dish the baby tomatoes, while still orange

• hyssop on our new duck dish, adding lovely peppery and liquorice flavours
• mangetout with our pasta dish
• our cucumbers with our turbot as a ‘spaghetti’, cooked lightly with some butter, finished with a little orange zest 
• Swiss chard for side dishes with kale and Manni extra virgin olive oil 
• curly kale for side dishes
• a fresh julienne with some olive oil created from our beetroots, used as a type of sushi canapé on the vegetarian tasting menu 

• wild fennel on our Parmesan shortbreads, a firm customers’ favourite, with their flavour-packed crunchiness, bringing visual and flavour vibrancy, a lovely anise character, to start the meal 
• wild marjoram on lamb
• lemon verbena, sorrel on fish, tomatoes
• Summer savoury to finish our lamb sauce and when the flowers were available we garnished the lamb with them
• variegated nasturtium leaves to garnish the turbot, bringing a peppery touch, some ‘spikiness’

Our experiment so far this year is Aztec broccoli, Huauzontle; first introduced to us by watching ‘Gardeners’ World’ with Monty Don.

Grown here from seed, this beautiful and vigorous plant has a fascinating history. Much of the tribute from the provinces of the Inca Empire to the Emperor was paid in Huauzontle.

It looks like a flimsy ‘weed’ early on, but then it lets rip, upwards and sideways! We overplanted and underestimated how big it would become!

Lovely edible leaves and tender early shoots, delicate broccoli/spinach-like flavour with hints of asparagus and a slightly nutty taste; delicious flower shoots, with leaves and buds for gathering before the petals open.

We are:

• using the leaves with yellow beans, butter and olive oil
• planning to use this on our new late Summer scallop dish
• looking forward to letting it grow fully to see what happens with the flavours and red Autumn colour. If it rewards us with its colour, we will show it later.

As for ordinary broccoli, well not a good year – lots of very vigorous growth, but we are still waiting and hoping… Still, next to our lovely medlar tree, also racing for the sky, since we planted it no more than a couple of feet tall. 

Looking to the future, we have gathered:

• chamomile, freshly picked, immediately dried ready to use
• apples and rhubarb for a fermented verjus for a dressing for our new scallop dish

• figs, both fat and sweet, and underripe before the wasps get them, some prepared, cooked in port and spices and some pickled in garden herbs, sage, rosemary, thyme, white wine.  

Our red sunflowers are at all stages, buds, glorious full flower, passing over and drying.

Some of our beautiful globe artichokes have been held back by the Huauzontle, but some are flourishing. We can’t wait for them to reach their lovely potential.

We will also use both the sunflowers and the globe artichokes later to make a salad, with horseradish and almond milk, fresh lemon verbena.

What enthuses and inspires us in the gardens?

In our minds and hearts we approach our gardens as:

• part of important pathways and habitat for wildlife
• just a part of a wider landscape and network evolved over thousands of years, the constants being the Thames,  water meadows, the great hill overlooking the river and Petersham, the chalk streams cascading through it and the rolling landscape, now Richmond Park
  

• at a crossroads  between the Thames,  woodlands on the slopes of Richmond Hill, Richmond Park and the Carolean avenues of Ham House along the river as it wanders West –  an ocean of trees and green spaces
  

• protective cover from the ominous and self-confident majesty of the effortlessly graceful birds of prey which so often circle overhead, far above. 
  

We planned it and are moving, slowly but surely, towards an overall productive garden – to evolve as a single entity, reflecting the indivisibility between nature, food, nurture of body and spirit, a core part of our values of living thoughtfully, responsibly and well. 

Themes that inspire us in the garden:

• purity and natural husbandry- no pesticides, fertilisers, herbicides (natural garlic and water infusion as a spray and Aztec Broccoli as a deterrent)
• cottage garden, medieval potager – vegetables, fruits, flowers, trees, hedges, orchard, together
• a combination rich for pollinators
• beauty and calm
• sharing for the diversity that flourishes in trees and plants and in the soil
• wood left to decay for animal life       
• water for the birds and other wildlife
• wild plants (weeds?)   

• repurposing pallets, old terracotta pots, plastic pots (retain the water), old water tanks 
• bug hotel within the pallets
• flowers for beauty, calm and for picking for inside

An APP that identifies bird song has been a revelatory reward this year, while birdsong was at its peak. There are so many birds which wilfully remain hidden and love the cover and the foraging the gardens provide. 

Also this has been an extraordinary year, not just for extremes, but on the positive side for butterflies and a wild, seemingly driven dash by plants for growth,  maturity, hibernation, for an accelerated cycle of nature. We see it all around us and here in the garden. Ripe blackberries in July!