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.

Monday, December 20, 2021

Homemade

 It is always rewarding when you have something that you made yourself, and doubly so if you collected materials from the garden.

Most meals come under this description but at this time of year there is the chance to do more.

I always like to make the Christmas decorations using materials collected from the garden, environmentally friendly. no miles and fully compostable or recyclable after use.

I made 2 wreaths this year. I have used laurel as the main foliage, I could do with some conifer or leylandii really, perhaps I should plant some? or perhaps not! (be careful what you wish for).

The wreath by the front door also includes ivy, holly, mistletoe and sedum seed heads. On an ivy stem circle and fir cones which I made about 8 years ago and have reused every year since. Oh and an apple too.

We also put a wreath on the garden gate, again a reused circle with this year laurel, sedum , holly and apple.

The table on the patio gets a decoration too. Using the top of the now rusted chiminea which is nice and heavy, chicken wire inside to support the stems and a collection of seed heads and grasses from the garden. The inclusion honesty seed heads makes it really glow in the low light levels of this time of year.

A few stems with berries adds colour but not for long, the blackbirds fly into the display and eat the berries.

I also put a string of apples up for the blackbirds, unfortunately the squirrel has been and demolished it already.

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