Following a visit to the National Trust’s Trengwainton Garden in Penzance a National Trust Association group, based in North Staffordshire, has donated £800 to support the further development of the historically important walled kitchen garden.
The donation was used to purchase traditional Victorian terracotta forcing pots, produced by local business, Pendeen Pottery and Art Gallery. The pots, which are fired to a higher temperature than usual to withstand the British weather and frosts, enable crops to be brought on earlier and produce a sweeter, juicier and less stringy vegetable. In the walled garden, the pots will be used for both rhubarb and celery.
The walled garden, which has been built to the dimensions of Noah’s Ark, contains unique sloping beds designed to make the most of the warmth of the spring sun and so enable the cultivation of early vegetables, fruit and flowers.
The kitchen garden is being developed to produce a range of vegetables and provide visitors with more insight into what the garden would have looked like in the past and how it would have been used.
Project Gardener Catherine Cartwright, who is overseeing the re-development of the walled garden says:
'The walled kitchen garden project provides us with a fantastic opportunity to share what we do with our visitors and local groups. As the garden develops, we will be providing more opportunities for joining-in and hands on learning and also for sharing our knowledge and skills of growing, tending and harvesting the different vegetables we have. The pots are a real enhancement to the garden and are another example of how vegetables can be cultivated both here in the National Trust’s garden and by visitors at home'.
|
