Bumper Harvest

We have had a bumper harvest through late summer/early autumn with huge quantities of produce going to the Café where our fantastic team in the kitchens have been putting it to good use. The plums especially have had a great season and all the trees were hanging with fruit

We recently had some amazing drone footage taken of the garden so please do take a look at it, you can really see the garden taking shape. There will be more drone footage taken in the future so that you can follow the development of the garden.

We had the last of our performances in the garden for this summer at the end of August….it was a roaring success! There will sure to be more coming next summer so please do look out for them being advertised.

There will still be an abundance of flowers in the garden during October so please come and take a look for yourselves

Our Garden Market is on this weekend (Saturday 30th September)

As it’s the height of the season our annual Garden Market will celebrate the best in fresh seasonal garden produce from fresh fruit, vegetables, herbs and plants. We’ll also have flower and wreath demonstrations, hands-on displays from local artisans as well as free children’s play, garden entry and garden trail.

The garden will be alive with live music from local band Gordon James and the Power and gin cocktails will be flowing. For the foodies we’re offering delicious seasonal street food with particular focus on our amazing apples and chillies. For those wanting a more formal meal our cafe will be serving an autumnal themed menu for the day but please note booking is essential for the cafe as it will be busy! For the children we have free children’s play, a children’s trail in the garden, pumpkin carving and make-your-own flower pot men!

In case there’s a chill in the air we’ll have our fire pit lit and mulled wine on offer so no need to worry about being cold! Plus we’ll be rustling up our homemade toffee apples once again. It really will be fun for all the family so come along and enjoy a fun day out.

Opportunity North East Networking Event

On Monday 26th September we welcomed local food and drink producers, hoteliers, chefs and restaurateurs to the Opportunity North East Networking Event. A fantastic chance for all to create new business connections to enhance the use of local produce in the foodservice sector and help develop the food tourism offering in the region, we welcomed over 60 guests to sample our delicious food and find out about our journey!

Plant | Pick | Plate

What a great time of the year it is to be a gardener, the harvest is in full flow and the garden is full of colour. Our special micro climate that we enjoy in this part of Scotland helps us to grow some extremely surprising crops, who would have thought we could grow peaches, apricots and figs outdoors! Our trees produce fine crops every year and much of the fruit is harvested for our Café where our talented team of Chefs create delicious meals for our customers.

The cooler summer this year has meant that many of the flowers have been a little later than usual but as a result of this they will have plenty of energy and life to keep them going through the autumn months, we have many different varieties so please come and enjoy them.

The herb beds, which were planted last year have matured beautifully and are a riot of colour and scent which our visitors are enjoying as well as the local bee population, I have never seen so many bumble and honey bees in one area. The Chefs have been making good use of the abundance of flowers and foliage so you can also enjoy the flavours of the herbs too.

Food for thought

The sun is finally shining again. And it’s now that I get to reap the rewards for all the work John and the Gardening Team have been doing for the last few ‘hungry months’. It’s showing its promise too, we look to be in for a great year of produce. Embracing our Plant Pick Plate ethos, we have Cavolo Nero, and Chard (a favourite of mine), paired with the stunningly sweet baby carrots on our Sunday roasts.  In addition, we have our first potatoes of the season, generously covered in the fresh rosemary that surrounds the outside seating and the rhubarb has found its way into a creme brulee! We’ve even more early summer treats with baby beets, courgette And cucumber too.

Continuing our ethos of fresh food from our doorsteps, we teamed up with our local butcher Jamiesons to make the “Fochabers Sausage”. Stuffing it full of our garden sage, red onion and rosemary chutney, it’s combined with local pork belly, Moray haggis and our very own apple and pear cider. It’s delicious!

It’s not just the vegetables being picked in the garden though. We’ve had a stunning crop of redcurrants, and we’ve created a special Garden themed sweet to make the most of them.

The Gin Garden Recipe

Lavender and Honey Mousse, Gin Soaked Garden Berries, Chocolate Soil and Edible Flowers. This one seems a touch difficult. But it’s much easier than it looks, and you can have some real fun making (and tasting) it.

For The Berries…
200ml water
100g Sugar
50ml GC Gin
400g Mixed Garden Berries

Bring the water and sugar to the boil (add the Gin in now if you don’t want it to be so tipsy), and set aside to cool. When it’s at room temperature, glug it all over your berries. I’ve used blueberry, raspberry and garden redcurrants for mine, but any and all will come to life in the Gin syrup.

For The Mousse…
A dozen Fresh Lavender heads
100g Honey
500ml Double Cream
3 Egg Yolks
2 Gelatin Leaves
200ml Milk

Put the lavender heads, gelatin and milk into a pan. Heat gently with a lid on, when it come to a near boil, remove the pan from the heat and wrap the top with cling film, this will keep the flavour and aroma in. This process can be used to infuse milk with nearly any flavour, if you wish to be even more experimental. Leave the pan to rest and Infuse like this for at least half an hour.

Once rested, strain the pan in to another and put it back on to a gentle heat.

Meanwhile in a mixing bowl, beat your egg and honey until it turns a brilliant thick fluffy white. Slowly beat in your hot infused milk, once incorporated put the mix into a thick bottomed pan (this will stop your airy custard from getting a heat shock and splitting). Put it on a low gentle heat, and stir with a wooden spoon, once its thickened enough to coat the back of your spoon, remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Whisk your double cream until it’s just past a soft peak, and is just able to hold its shape. Gently fold about a quarter of your cream into the custard, when its consistency lightens you begin to fold the custard in to the cream (this process allows you to keep more air in the mousse as the less folds you make to the cream, the more air you’ll keep in).

For The Soil…
200g sugar
100ml Water
200g Dark Chocolate
50g Dark Cocoa Powder

Put the sugar and water in a thick bottomed pan and bring to the boil, then, reduce the heat, once the water evaporates your caramel can burn quickly, use a sugar temperature probe and once the sugar hits 120c stir in your cocoa and chocolate. The sudden drop in temperature causes the sugar to crystallise with the chocolate and viola. Every pastry chefs favourite plate sprinkle.

Putting it together…
I’ve used little ceramic flower pots but any bowl, mug, jug or glass will work. Spoon the boozy berries in and your mousse on top, and generously cover it in the chocolate soil.

And for The Flowers and plants…
Nasturtium
Viola
Borridge
Mint
Calendula
Lavender
Sweet pea tendrils

This is where I have a real advantage as alot of edible flowers can be hard to come by. But I have used Borridge, Calendula , Nasturtium and Viola’s to garnish mine. All can be grown fairly simply at home, im told, and im sure all of our gardeners could give you some great advice on doing so. The Calendula flower has a beautifully subtle sweetness, and the nasturtium a floral pepperiness that really suprises you. The Violas a slight tartness and the Borridge a cool flavour, lots of people liken to cucumber. I used mint, lavender and pea tendrils for the “plants”.

So that’s summer so far, but with the Garden just coming in to its own now, there’s lots more to come.

Birthdays, lavender and theatre fun

We’ve had a wonderful July so far! We kick started with our 3rd Birthday Party on 1st July and were joined by over 500 lovely visitors and supporters as we opened the garden and children’s play for the weekend. It was fantastic to see so many new faces and lots of you took the opportunity to explore the wonders of our ongoing project and chat to the gardeners about what we have planned for the future. For the foodies, we had a hog roast, BBQ, live music, gin and cider – what a feast! Thank you to Emma Gibb for sharing her gorgeous photos.

Plus in the evening we celebrated with a cocktail and food pairing evening (can you tell we like food?!) Join us same time next year for our fourth.

This is one of our favourite times of year in the garden as there is lots of beautiful produce to be harvested for use in the Restaurant – it only seems two minutes since we were sowing all the seeds!

Please do visit us and see our stunning 3,000 lavender plants in the centre of the garden which are in full bloom at the moment, the plants were planted two years ago and have filled the space really well. It’s rare to see so many in one place and the bees love them too.

Our ever increasing number of espalier apple and pear trees are growing well and have produced lots of growth so far this season, we now have over 300 which does not include the 250 mature specimens on the walls. We have still got at least another 300 to plant over the next few years. Training them is a time consuming but enjoyable process.