After my visit to Tim Phillips’ walled garden vineyard (see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=10678), I was very happy that Susan Campbell found time in a busy schedule to meet and she drove me to her and husband Mike Kleyn’s home and garden on the Solent… sadly, Mike was travelling on the other side of the world visiting family… :(
Susan is the co-founder, in 2001, of the Walled Kitchen Garden Network and began researching the history of walled kitchen gardens in 1981 (the same year that I moved to Norway, so I know it’s an awful long time!). She has personally visited and photographed over 600 walled kitchen gardens in the UK and abroad, making her a foremost authority on the subject. I met her as she had come across my book and on the strength of it invited me over from Norway to give a couple of talks at the Walled Kitchen Garden Network Forum at Croome (see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=2554). You can read more about this network here: http://www.walledgardens.net
However, the main reason for my visit was to see first hand Susan’s sea kale yard, the only operation I’m aware of that delivers seakale commercially in the UK, despite sea kale being for me the most English of all vegetables and for some the King of vegetables! See also my blog post about visiting the Curtis Museum in Alton, coming soon!
Susan at the entrance gate to her garden, which is flanked by a large fig tree!
Susan is an author and expert on Garden History and Walled Gardens!
Edimental border with cardoons and day lilies!
Fennel
Salt tolerant edible Atriplex halimus hedge next to the sea!
Lavatera arborea, Tree mallow
Sea beet on the sea wall under Tamarix
Atriplex halimus
Flowering windshaped oak in the background
Susan’s Seakale yard! She has unsuccessfully tried to persuade neighbouring farmers to scale (skale?) up the operation, but none have been willing to take the risk…..and continue to grow rape seed…………
A box of blanched Seakale on the way to London! Photo: Susan Campbell
Showing where the seakale had been cut
The cultivar Lily White is the most popular variety… (with the restaurant Susan delivers to)
Allium triquetrum is invasive, but delicious and edimental!!!
Allium triquetrum is invasive, but delicious and edimental!!!
The watercress in Susan’s pond was gigantic!!
Gigantic were the Caltha palustris leaves too (marsh marigold)
Gunnera…we had a taste…not as sweet as the ones I tasted last autumn in Bergen and Edinburgh
Oak in flower
Phormiums…important food and fibre plants for the Maori!
Hosta ready to harvest!
Cardoons
An Allium I gave to Susan at Croome finally got a scientific name!
Allium barstowii :)
Pelargonium spp.
The traditional kitchen garden
Swiss chards
Susan has a large collection of old and new books…I could have spent the whole day there…including Vilmorin’s The Vegetable Garden. I could have stayed here for a week :)
Susan’s hand written notes on Seakale from her extensive card notes!! It’s been suggested that Pliny (1st century ad) was referring to seakale when he wrote of a kind of cabbage called ‘halmyrides’, which grew on the coast!
The Needles on the Isle of Wight from Susan’s garden
The shoreline at Susan’s house
Waiting for the train at Lymington Harbour, I was fooled by this owl sitting waiting for the Isle of Wight ferry…it’s head moved!
The train home via Brockenhurst and the New Forest…
…and as I left Lymington Pier, this Giant fish head cloud appeared….not sure what that was all about? :)
Late April 2017 and I finally got round to visit some folks in South Hampshire who I’d met at the Walled Kitchen Garden Forum weekend at Croome in 2015! I love enthusiastic people who are willing to take risks…Tim Phillips is one of these…in his own words “His once abandoned 19th century kitchen garden in Hampshire provides a fantastic environment for…Chardonnay, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc vines. The combination of gravel soils, Lymington’s maritime climate and the thermal properties of the walls offer a unique vine-growing opportunity from which both still and sparkling wines are crafted”.. (see http://www.charlieherring.com/)
On the day of my visit, Tim had been up all night keeping his vines from freezing by burning wood fires in the vineyard….this strategy seems to have saved the crop from a complete failure of the 2017 vintage :) This problem wasn’t restricted to England but also famous wine growing areas in France: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/29/in-pictures-french-farmers-use-fire-to-try-to-save-their-vineyards.html
I look forward to returning in a few years to view you sea kale production areas ;)
I first met Tim’s world at the Walled Kitchen Garden Forum weekend at Croome in 2015…here’s him adressing the enthusiastic crowd!
Tim produces Charlie Herring wines from the vineyard!
…and I was lucky enough to be given a couple of bottles of Hampshire wine, here shown atop my own walled garden (the world’s lowest) which used to serve as the base of my greenhouse…
Arriving at the vineyard..it is much higher on the outside than the inside! A couple of old bricklayers are working on restoring the walls, removing the invading ivy!
Tim had been up most of the previous night burning wood in various places in an attempt to drive the frost away…Tim told me after that about 80% of shoots had survived, so not as big a disaster as had been feared…
The beginnings of Tim’s Hampshire Tea enterprise!
A great old organic apple tree at one end of the walled garden!
Windows would have been used here to ripen fruit early..
Tim told me that this Swiss chard kept on coming back…perennial or seeding itself?
Another apple tree
This is where we’ve decided Tim will grow Sea Kale ;)
Cardoon and nettle infested compost heap :) I teached TIm how to eat raw nettle ;)
The raspberries had been frosted…
There’s a wonderful sunken greenhouse in the walled garden
The greenhouse…
…with a Robin nesting at one end!
Ongoing wall restoration…
Perennial vegetables fit well with the perennial vines, tea and apples!
Charlie Herring wines…
After lunch at a local pub, when we were joined by Susan Campbell, who I was visiting in the afternoon, Tim took us to his winery and adjacent land!
I loved the wallpaper, old maps reflecting Tim’s unexpected past of motorbike racer (Isle of Man) and mountain walking maps
…including a map showing my next stop at Susan Campbell’s wonderful house and garden (including sea kale yard) on the Solent!
Tim’s pond with Yellow flag, Bulrushes (supermarket of the swamps), water mint etc.
Susan found some St. George’s Mushrooms, although a bit old!
Tim wanted to show me this amazing hop that he’d used for making a wild hop beer!
….and edible hop shoots coming up all over the place!
Hop shoots
Hops climbing over the hedge
…and Hampshire’s Secret Garden…and, no, I didn’t get to see what was beyond…I can imagine though :)
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
