Heritage Vegetables

June 25, 2018By Gordon CastleBlog, Gardening advice 2 Comments
Heritage Vegetables

Today we have a blog written by our gardener Liz who joined the team last summer.

Gordon Castle Walled Garden Heritage Vegetables

At Gordon Castle Walled Garden we have decided to try growing a variety of heritage or heirloom vegetables.  The definition of heritage/heirloom is a plant that has been in cultivation for 50 years or more.  Some people insist that 100 years is the magic number.  Whichever is correct, modern agriculture really came into its own in 1945, following World War 2.  Nowadays, as well as the Walled Garden, there are many people who have allotments of their own and take great pleasure in growing their own vegetables.

So, some of the vegetables we have decided to grow are: brussel sprouts – Evesham Special, beetroot – Mr. Crosby’s Egyptian, cauliflower – Dwarf Efurt (sometimes known as snowball) celeriac – Giant Prague, Musselburgh leeks, and peas – Kelvedon Wonder.  There are lots more we are trying, the list could go on for ever.

Gordon Castle Walled Garden Heritage Vegetables

Today I sowed some of the beetroot and celeriac.  Sown into modules of 104, watered from the bottom, then put into the sunken greenhouse until they germinate.  Once hardened off, they will be planted and left to mature, tended to by our team of gardeners until harvest is ready.  There’s something so lovely about going to the garden to harvest fresh vegetables for your evening meal.  We take great pride in providing delicious Scottish produce for the café – and the chefs love it too!

Gordon Castle Walled Garden Heritage Vegetables

Once we’ve supplied the cafe with vegetables, we’ll sell any extra in the shop.  The shop is open seven days a week.

We grow tomatoes in our greenhouses.  Ailsa Craig – a very hardy Scottish variety, among many other varieties.  A variety of potatoes, also called Ailsa Craig……another heritage vegetable.

Gordon Castle Walled Garden Heritage Vegetables

The pleasure this gives me cannot be put into words.  I would not change my job for the world.

Liz

Volunteer Week

April 11, 2018By Gordon CastleBlog, Uncategorized No Comments
Volunteer Week

This week we are celebrating all the help we get from our wonderful volunteers in our beautiful Walled Garden!

Throughout the years we’ve had many people volunteer time helping develop the garden to its full potential and we are ever so grateful of all who come to lend a hand. We are proud to support the WWOOF program where volunteers can experience a wide range of opportunities all across the world on organic farms. We have welcomed a number or volunteers throughout the years through this program and have seen a real positive effect to the garden because of them. Check out our short video below where we interviewed two volunteers from Brazil last winter.

As well as working with the WWOOF program, many of our volunteers come from the local area, keen to help us complete this historic project. One of our regulars, Margaret has been with us for over four years now.We managed to steal a second of Margaret’s precious time to ask about her volunteering experience.

“I started volunteering at the beginning of the restoration of the Walled Garden and just love seeing the progress that has been made. I’ve learnt so much about gardening from planting to growing apricots and step over apples. It’s a real team effort and we all work hard – it’s kept me fit during my retirement that’s for sure! My favourite part of the garden would have to be the amphitheatre. It’s such a unique addition, especially for this area, and it’s so lovely to see the families gather in summer when we have outdoor theatre performances. This year will see lots of progression in the garden and I can’t wait to be a part of that.”

We too are a fan of our outdoor performances and with over five lines up including Pride and Prejudice, Dr Dolittle and The Midnight Gang it will be a jammed packed schedule. Find out more details here.

Volunteers at Gordon Castle Walled Garden

We love to get our volunteers involved with as wide a range of jobs in the garden as possible. You can expect to do everything from weeding, seed sowing and planting out to harvesting, cutting, arranging and drying flowers and decorating the café and shop. We’re always happy to teach volunteers about what we are doing so no previous gardening experience is necessary. We take volunteers Monday to Friday from 10am-4pm and are very flexible as to when and how long you would want to work. We also offer a free friends of the Walled Garden membership, a bowl of soup for lunch and free garden produce depending on what is available to all our volunteers.

We truly appreciate all the help we get as it is invaluable to the garden and to our business. As a big thank you we are hosting our 4th birthday garden party on the 7th July to celebrate all our volunteers, staff and their families. There will be live music, a bbq and lots of craft cider to enjoy. You are all invited!

If you would like to volunteer in the garden, we would love to hear from you! Please send your CV and details to info@gordoncastlescotland.com. 

What’s Been Happening in The Garden This April

April 9, 2018By Gordon CastleBlog, Gardening advice No Comments
What’s Been Happening in The Garden This April

We’re not quite sure whether spring is here or not in the Walled Garden. One moment the crocus flowers are open wide, basking in the sunshine and covered in honey bees, and the next they’re closed shut sheltering from snow and bitter winds. Come rain or shine we’ve been busy getting everything ready for the growing season ahead. The biggest development this year is our new cherry orchard; 52 trees, 5 different varieties, all planted up waiting for some warmth the get them growing. We deliberately planted larger 5-year-old trees so that we can benefit from their lovely spring flowers straight away and with any luck we should get some fruit this summer as well, so look out for a new cherry gin liqueur later in the year! We’ve added another 98 apple trees to our step-over posts giving us 10 more Scottish varieties lining the perimeter path around the garden.

Bee and Crocus

The cut flower beds are set to look better than ever with the addition of 40 scented roses and we’ll be planting many more perennial plants as soon as the soil has dried out a little! Please do get in contact with us if you would like a list of all the cut flowers we grow and when they’re available.

Seed sowing is in full force in the potting shed, giving us a little respite from the cold weather. We all love checking the greenhouses every morning to see what has germinated over-night. Almost every inch of the heated greenhouse is full of healthy young plants soon to be hardened off and planted in out in the garden. I’d liked to have sown the first succession of vegetables direct into the beds by now, but there is little point sowing into cold wet soil so we just have to accept the season will be a little late this year.

Seedlings

We’re trying to fill the harvesting gap this year by growing micro-greens. Micro-greens are the seedlings of vegetables and herbs that have the most sweet and intense flavour. At the request of our head chef, we’re experimenting with coriander, peas, rocket, perilla, cress and beetroot. Our first crop has been a great success. Watch this space for a blog post all about how to grow your own micro-greens later in the year.

Planted Seeds

If you’ve visited in the last few days you may have noticed some strange, spikey new plants in the lavender bed. They’re actually a type of citrus, Poncirus trifoliata, that should produce small fruit and give height and structure to the centre of the garden.

Poncirus trifoliata

Lots of work has been done to enrich the natural play area, we’ve added stepping-stumps, a barefoot path, lots of fruit trees, giant black-boards and even put a roof on-top of the bug-hotel! And there’s plenty more to do with budding little gardeners over the Easter holidays, we have a baby-animal themed nature trail around the garden, just ask in the shop for more details. If you are a regular visitor don’t forget ‘Friends of the Walled Garden’ membership could save money on garden admission and gives you a discount in the shop and café.

Peach Blossom

Despite the changing weather, the huge old apricot trees on the south wall have started flowering, as reliable as ever. Very soon the plums will bloom, followed by the apples and finally the pear trees. If you’ve not visited the Walled Garden during the spring before I would urge you to do so, the fruit blossom really is spectacular and we’ve been busy planting many thousands of spring bulbs to add to the display. And there’s plenty happening in the garden during April, we’re starting to fill up the vegetable and cut flower beds, our daffodils and tulips will be a riot of colour very soon, and we have a selection of lovely spring plants and cut flowers for sale at the shop. So there’s plenty to do and see in the walled garden this spring – plus we have been selected as one of Jules Hudson’s top 5 gardens to visit in Britain so definitely worth a look.

That’s all for now, Ed.

New Head Gardener Appointed

January 11, 2018By Gordon CastleBlog, Gardening advice 3 Comments
New Head Gardener Appointed

We have lots of exciting things planned for 2018 but none more than to kick start with a new Head Gardener, Ed Bollom. Our previous head gardener John Hawley left us in November for a new life south of the border with his family.

Ed isn’t new to our Scottish oasis, he has been a senior gardener here for several years and has been working hard on our garden project. You may recognise him from some of our YouTube garden tutorials! He is also the man behind many of our amazing photographs.

So, to introduce Ed properly to his new role, here is his first blog post!

For my first garden blog post I thought I’d explain how my horticultural career brought me to Gordon Castle.

I’ve been gardening for almost 15 years now and Gordon Castle is the seventh garden I’ve worked in. My career has taken me all over the country working in historic and botanic gardens, from Osborne House on the Isle of Wight to Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. I started my journey studying sustainable horticulture at Cannington college in Somerset, motivated by a love for working outdoors and went on to work in several gardens as part of an apprenticeship scheme run by the Professional Gardener’s Guild.

My real passion has always been for productive gardening; particularly growing fruit and vegetables. As a student I always dreamed of working in a traditional kitchen garden growing plants that would actually be used rather than simply admired!

I learnt the craft of productive gardening as the gardener in charge of the organic walled garden, nursery and orchard for the Prince of Wales at Highgrove House in Gloucestershire.  I spent five fantastic years growing all the fruit, vegetables, cut flowers and herbs for the Prince and his guests. During that time I married my lovely wife Anna and we had our first child Freddie.

Ed Bollom First Blog Post Head Gardener

I first heard about the Walled Garden at Gordon Castle from my father in law, Simon McPhun, who was helping out in the early stages of the project. When Simon first showed me Arnie Maynard’s plans for the garden I thought it was far too ambitious; the kitchen garden at Highgrove was 1 acre and took all of my energy with the help of 2 other gardeners to keep it to a decent standard and here was a project to renovate a walled garden almost eight times the size!

Anna and I were happy in Gloucestershire and very busy as new parents, so we put any ideas of moving out of our minds. But I couldn’t help thinking about the walled garden project and decided that maybe we should just go and have a look at the site. When we got up to Fochabers and looked around the garden (it looked more like a building site at the time) I started to see the potential and that whilst the plans were ambitious Angus and Zara were going to make it work. It is such an unusual project I felt it was too good an opportunity to miss.

Anna, Freddie and I made the move from Gloucestershire to Moray just as we discovered that Anna was pregnant with our daughter Amelie and I started work as deputy head gardener in May 2015.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching the garden develop for the last couple of years, the garden team are fantastic and make it a friendly and productive place to work. I don’t think there is anywhere else in the country doing what we are doing on such a grand scale. Coming into my third season I feel I’m really starting to get to know the garden and hopefully can hit the ground running as Head Gardener.

I love the idea of taking this wonderful historic space and turning it into a functioning productive Garden growing the highest quality produce. Traditionally walled gardens were used to feed the great houses of our country, I like to think of the Walled Garden Project as a modern take on a very old theme. So please keep on following us on our journey, there’s plenty more to come!

A Very Merry End To 2017

December 22, 2017By Gordon CastleBlog
A Very Merry End To 2017

A Very Merry End To 2017

Christmas has come around all too quickly and the end of the year is always a time for family and reflection. As we look back on our year, there have as always been the highs and the lows of running a business and dealing with the day to day stresses whether personal, financial or physical!

Five years ago we were living in the South, Angus working long hours in London, bringing up seven children between us, and enjoying visiting his parents a few times a year, fishing or staying in Garden cottage with friends. ( the castle was let on a long lease after his grandmother died). If you had told me that as fifty something yr olds we would be running an exclusive use venue, a fishing business, holiday cottages, build a café and visitor attraction garden open to the public 363 days, start up a shop and a products business ( the gin is going down well!) I think we would have just laughed at the impossibility, but here we are! The learning curve has been steep, but we have met amazing people and made many new friends along the way.

There are so many different parts to the Estate and Walled Garden that sometimes we ‘run’ from one thing to another and never seem to have time to stop and take stock of what has been achieved in a relatively short space of time.

Gordon Castle Walled Garden Summer 2017

The Walled Garden
For us the high points were seeing the building of the garden advance yet further. The bountiful  harvest of plums, apricots, apples and pears from our ancient trees and listening to the comments of returning visitors who all said they could see such a difference in the garden from last year. It is hard when you are in the garden every day to see the progress and not focus on all the things we still have to do and improve. So lovely people, thank you! It will give us fresh impetus for planning the coming year. The ‘lows’ were the terrible Summer, horrendous for our vegetables, everyone’s morale and our pumpkins which were puny! Nothing grew except the weeds which were unstoppable. For the café staff waiting to serve on all those lovely outdoor tables, so many wasted weekends, although we were lucky with our outdoor theatres ( except Mikado!) and our birthday weekend and market day were ‘made’ by finally having some good weather. We were so excited to win ‘best food tourism experience’ and it gave everyone on site a huge lift.

Gordon Castle Autumn

The Castle
The re-plumbing and re- wiring and total re-decoration have now faded slightly from our memory as we continue to ‘fill’ the Castle with people from all parts coming to enjoy either the fishing, (not too bad a season), corporate guests wanting to give clients a special experience, some unusual wearing of kilts and plenty of whisky tasting, weddings, we did a lot of weather watching but were able to make use of the newly restored Orangery where we have replaced the roof that had collapsed and had been open to the elements for a decade, and some very happy family celebrations.

We welcomed our first festival ‘refuel 2017’ and despite the weather they are returning next year. We also had the circus and a number of smaller lunches and dinners.

Angus and Zara Gordon Lennox

The Highland Games
This has now become a ‘date’ for the diary both locally and further afield and has grown into a serious part of our year, although this year with Angus struck down with ‘man flu’ for the whole week before it was not our easiest or happiest ‘lead up’ and as the torrential rain fell on Saturday it was a very ‘wet’ low point. However the sun shone for Sunday and 10,000 people came to support the many different competitors and exhibitors which made it all worthwhile for our small team who really put the hours in, and work so hard to make it a success. It is a crazy amount of time spent for one day with so much preparation and planning needed but I think we have all created an event with a really special atmosphere, that is wonderfully supported by our local community and we could not have enjoyed more handing over a cheque to the head of Milnes and look forward to hearing what the pupils have been able to do with it. We have already started planning for next year! May 20th!

Gordon Castle Highland Games 2017

The Gordon Castle luxury branded products continue to grow, our bath and beauty products get rave reviews from the guests in the Castle and we are looking forward to having an amenities range for hotels and  restaurants during the next year.

Gordon Castle Gin Potting Shed

The gin won gold medals from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Brussels and China. It is now found in many independents and some supermarkets  so we hope to build on the success next year. More cider will be made from our apples and pears and hopefully some new products for the shop.

On a personal note I became a grandmother for the first time, to gorgeous ‘Sienna’  which has made me reflect on the miracle of new life whether a baby or rejuvenating the land and look back over the last few years as well as looking forward to all the excitements to come.

Baby Sienna

 

Zara Gordon Lennox Granny

Angus’ youngest son left school and has been working in the Walled Garden office before going to New Zealand in January! A big milestone for us to get them all through some kind of education. The rest are in the South currently and fingers crossed employed.

Geordie and Angus Gordon Lennox

We feel incredibly lucky and very blessed that we live in such a beautiful place. Although the snow is falling as I write, being in the garden after everyone has left on a Summers evening is my ‘happy place’, watching the oystercatchers or red squirrels whilst I weed or mow and watching nature perform miracles through the seasons, from seed to fully grown plant is truly inspiring and makes me feel we can all work together to try and create something that can benefit our planet and protect it for future generations. I hope we can all find time in 2018 to do that which makes us feel happy and more connected with the world around us.

Angus and Zara Gordon Lennox of Gordon Castle

Which only leaves a huge thank you to all our very dedicated and hardworking team without whom none of the above would be possible and to all our visitors, customers and clients for your continued support, we appreciate and value each and everyone one of you. ‘Tis the Season of goodwill, frosty days, warm fires and maybe even a glass or two of our gin or cider, may we  wish you and your families a very happy Christmas and amazing New Year.

Best wishes for 2018,

Angus and Zara