A quartet of potagers, some weird edibles and a numbing flower

Part 1

Whenever I visit a garden, I’m immediately drawn to the kitchen garden, if there is one, in the hope of seeing something new or different. Over the last few weeks, I have visited four kitchen gardens, both in the UK and in the Loire, France and I have plenty to share with you. The four kitchen gardens are: The Global World Garden at RHS Hyde Hall and Yeo Valley Organic Garden in the UK, and Villandry and Le Jardins du Prieuré Notre-Dame d’Orsan in France.  In this post I’m writing about The Global World Garden and Le Jardins du Prieuré Notre-Dame d’Orsan. The other two follow next week.

Part of the Global World Garden at Hyde Hall with aubergines and lab lab trellis

The Global World Garden at Hyde Hall

This super duper kitchen garden was designed by Xa Tollemache and constructed in 2017 to explore the world of vegetables around the world, displaying unusual and rare types of vegetables not normally seen in your average British allotment, and to reflect the increasing diverse UK society. It certainly did that!

The circular garden is arranged around a beautiful octagonal greenhouse and is divided into four sectors, each displaying the crops from a particular region of the world - North America, Central and South America, Europe and the Middle East and Asia.  In all around 350 different types / varieties of edibles are present, including the ornamentals, such as canna, dahlia and day lily.

This kitchen garden was built on the site of an old nursery so the soil needed some amendments. The deep raised beds, for example, received a layer of sandy grit over the original heavy clay soil and were then filled with a mix of 3 parts  sandy loam to one part of the clay soil. This sandy loan was actually soil collected from sugar beet washing, making use of a local ‘waste’ material. To top off, the beds received a mix of sandy loam and Melcourt compost. The final pH turned out to be around 7.8 so a pine bark mulch was added to move the pH to neutral.

Looking around, the crops looked to be in good health and there was a plentiful harvest of most, including some massive pumpkins which was rather ‘depressing’ to see, given the slow progress my squash have made this year. I suspect this reflects the warmer climate of Essex, as the crops seemed to be well ahead of mine in Somerset.

The Global World Garden (top row l to r ) Potato and tomatoes, amaranthus, sweet potato (middle row l to r) tower of mashua, perilla, an interesting bicycle support for squash (bottom l to r) Chinese yam, aibika and red burgandy okra

The photos feature some of the crops that caught my eye. I was most impressed by the South American garden with potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, chillis, mashua etc. Normally I wouldn’t recommend planting potatoes around your tomatoes because of the risk of blight, but I will forgive them here! I was surprised to see the sweet potato so rampant, creating a thick cover crop under the totems of tomatoes. Other crops of interest – the Chinese yam in the Asian garden, Malabar spinach and the beds of perilla and aubergines.

The beautiful greenhouse was home to half hardy crops such as okra (Abelmoschus esculentus), tomatoes, a rampant achocha (see below), luffa, plus something I had never seen before – aibika or edible hibiscus (Abelmoschus manihot). This is a perennial tropical plant from Asia, from the same genus as okra, growing to a couple of metres in height and bearing large pale yellow hibiscus flowers. It needs sunny, humid conditions and a free draining soil, so the greenhouse was perfect for it. The young leaves are edible, although quite mucilaginous. There are two varieties, one with large leaves which are traditionally used to wrap food and the other with palmate leaves (seen in photo). I found seed on sale here if you want to experiment.

Les Jardins du Prieuré Notre-Dame d’Orsan

I have spent a few weeks recently in the area of France to the west of Paris between Cherbourg and Tours as this is around 200 to 300 miles south of my home and gives me a hint of what the climate might be like in the decades to come. One of the gardens I was keen to visit was Le Prieuré d’Orsan, near Bourges.

The ornamental beds with the backdrop of the restored priory

Its origins date back to the 12th century, when it was a monastery but since then the site has gone through many ups and downs. Finally, in 1991, the derelict farm buildings and land were bought by architects Sonia Lesot and Patrice Taravella who wanted to restore the site to its former glory. They created a medieval garden for reflection and meditation with 14 small rooms partitioned by hedges and frames. Here there was space to grow food, grapes, medicines and ornamentals typical of the Middle Ages. By 2004, the gardens had been recognised as ‘Jardins Remarquable’. If you read my newsletter about pomology back in January, you may recognise the name Patrice Taravella who designed the gardens at the Newt. Then in 2017, the gardens were bought by Gareth Casey and Cyril Pearson who have maintained the gardens and also introduced more ecological approaches to its management, such as permaculture and mulching with wood chip.

The gardens are delightful. The first thing I noticed on entry to the garden terrace were large containers of spiral-trained gooseberries and behind me the wall of the barn was  covered by trained grapes and U-cordon pear trees - that set the scene for me. The garden was filled with structures, frames and supports made from chestnut and willow, trained fruit trees as well as a maze, orchard, ornamental garden and more vegetables beds. It wasn’t large but the rooms made it complex and very easy to get lost! There was so much to see and be inspired by in this garden.

The route around the garden took me first to the potager, with its beds full of vegetables and herbs and some interesting techniques that you can see in the photos. The large beds were slightly raised using wood sleepers and then divided into three by planks of wood. I particularly liked the way the carrots and parsnips were sown in raised ‘containers’ made from old roofing tiles so they had a deeper root run.

Views of the potager including the container for carrots, I likew the way these garlic chives are planted in a block, a wigwam of 6 tomatoes, support for cucumbers, the spirally trained gooseberries and amaranthus

There will be an additional post about this stunning garden with lists of apple varieties that are being grown there for paid subscribers tomorrow.  

Four unusual edibles

It’s weird how you don’t see a plant for ages and then you see it twice in a week - for me this was vila vila, electric daisies, lab lab beans and achocha which I spotted growing at Hyde Hall and Le Prieuré d’Orsan.

Clockwise from top L: vila vila, electric daisy, achocha and lab lab bean

Vila vila (Solanum sisymbriifolium)

This prickly, short-lived edible perennial goes under the name of sticky nightshade, Morelle de Balbis and litchi comes from South America. Related to the potato and tomato, it is able to cope with a light frost. I first came across this plant when reporting on an Innovative Farmers field lab into the use of trap crops to control potato cyst nematode.  This nematode is probably the most serious pest of potatoes in the UK and its really difficult to control, even with chemicals, so this field lab was looking at whether S. sisymbriifolium and the related S. scabrum could be sown as trap crops ahead of a potato crop to reduce nematode numbers. The field lab is still in progress but you can read more here.

So, it was interesting to see the plants grown as an edible crop.  This is an incredibly spiny plant that can reach around one metre in height. They are so spiny in fact, that in the US they are grown as a deer proof barrier!  They produce small red edible fruits within a spiny husk, which reminds me of a tomatillo. So what do they taste like? I would describe the flavour as being quite sour. Its not unpleasant but I wouldn’t want to eat more than one or two! Would I grow it? I’m not sure.  Yes, its an interesting plant but it needs space and it’s a prolific self seeder.  But… its spiny nature would offer vulnerable crops protection from the squirrels in my garden? May be to encircle my sweet corn? But the first task would be to procure some seed.  Has anybody grown this crop?

Electric daisy or toothache plant (Spilanthes oleracea)

I had forgotten about this daisy so was delighted to spot it in these gardens. It’s a weird one ‘cos the flowers (and leaves to a lesser extent) contain isobutalymide alkamide that has a tingling or numbing effect in the mouth. The daisy comes from Brazil and is not hardy in the UK and should be grown as an annual. It has many medicinal benefits (for tooth ache, gum disease, sore throats). Its also described as a ‘plant botox’  and is used in skin creams to beat those wrinkles! It’s on next year’s seed list!

Lab lab bean

I’ve not grown this attractive bean, but I think I should give it a try. It’s an oriental climber reaching around 2 metres with beautiful purple flowers followed by purplish green long flat pods. Interestingly, the leaves are also edible. They are marginal crops for growing outside in the UK, and the recommendation is to grow under cover, but those at Hyde Hall were really vigorous, so I expect they benefit from the warmer microclimate of the garden. Also, they tend to flower late in the summer so don’t except pods until August. Garden Organic give detailed cultivation advice here and recommend Rongai and Ipsa2 as being suitable for cultivation in the UK.

Achocha

It been a few years since I grew this crop and, to be honest, I wasn’t really a fan of the spiky fruits that appear late in the season. The hollow fruits taste a bit like a cucumber and can be stuffed in the same way as a green pepper, but don’t let them mature too much as they will become quite tough and black seeds will form inside.  Once they get going, they are vigorous plants.  I used to put out a couple of plants at the bottom of my large polytunnel which they took over, so rampant was their growth. The plants in the greenhouse at Hyde Hall were pretty rampant too.  They were growing outside at Prieuré d’Orsan and were just as vigorous with plenty of fruits.

Happy Gardening

Sally

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