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The Kitchen Garden

The Kitchen Garden

Discover our two-acre kitchen garden,
growing fresh produce for the Palace kitchens

Within our 18th-century Walled Garden lies the Kitchen Garden: a two-acre working garden growing much of the fresh produce that reaches our kitchens. What began as a small plot in 2022 has grown steadily, and this year we have doubled it again, adding 80 new no-dig beds, woodchip paths and three greenhouses, with the aim of the Palace kitchens being self-sufficient in fresh produce by 2027.

A Working Garden

 

Our Kitchen Garden is looked after by our green-fingered Vegetable Gardener Harrison Fannon and his team from Worthy Earth, a company who have designed and gone on to manage 9 market garden sites across Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey. The first plot was planted in April 2022 and has since grown dramatically in size. A no-dig method is used throughout, which involves adding organic material to the soil rather than taking away from it. The soil is raked by hand into long, even rows, a gentler approach that keeps the soil undisturbed and alive. Heritage beetroots, rainbow chard, herbs and edible flowers among other produce grow side by side, mingling together rather than sitting in tidy, separate rows. With this steady seasonal supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, our cafés and restaurants on site are now using much of what the Kitchen Garden produces. 

The History Behind the Walls

 

Built between 1705 and 1707 by Queen Anne's master gardener Henry Wise, the Walled Garden was the first area of the Gardens to be completed and was built for exactly this purpose of feeding the Palace, from the Marlborough family themselves to their many servants and guests. The high brick walls were built as 'hot walls' by the master bricklayers, and the flues were wood fired due to the ample wood supplies available from the Parkland. The walls also block the wind, keep out animals and hold the sun's heat, creating ideal conditions for intensive fruit and vegetable growing. If you have visited lately, you may have noticed that more apple trees have recently been planted along the back wall of the Walled Garden.

From Field to Fork

 

Much of the produce grown in the Kitchen Garden is sent to our Catering Team and used as ingredients for a wide range of dishes in the Orangery Restaurant, Walled Garden Pizzeria, Oxfordshire Pantry café and Stables café. With produce across every menu, it's a huge achievement that our chefs are finding a use for every harvest. Discover dishes that celebrate our Estate grown produce on our menus, available from our Cafés & Restaurants page below. Surplus fruit and vegetables are also very much enjoyed by our herd of Berkshire pigs who reside down at the Walled Garden next to Adventure Play.

Discover our Cafés and Restaurants

What's Growing This Summer

 

The Worthy Earth team have harvested mixed salad leaves, which are used in our cafés and restaurants for salads, sandwiches and wraps, as well as edible flowers, heritage beetroots, rainbow chard, spring onions, kale, fresh herbs, broad beans, mangetout and cherry tomatoes. Fennel, beef tomatoes, courgettes, carrots, cabbages, cucumbers and potatoes will follow as the season progresses as well as a new potato patch and a previously planted asparagus patch. The garden is also nurturing niche and perennial varieties, including rhubarb, Welsh onions and Korean mint. Many of these are grown in polycultures, with beans climbing kale stalks, beetroots gathering among lettuces and carrots growing companionably alongside onions, making the garden more resilient to pests and drought and much livelier to walk through.
 

Growing Together

 

Each week, the Worthy Earth team welcome 60 students from SEND schools across Oxfordshire, who join them in the everyday work of the garden: sowing seeds, planting out, weeding, harvesting, washing and composting, offering many of them a first chance to learn new skills and see what it takes to grow a vegetable from seed to plate. The same opportunities are offered free of charge to young adults, rehabilitation groups, corporate teams and over 20 volunteers, creating relationships and a sense of belonging which makes the Kitchen Garden special.

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