The gardens at Fowlescombe Farm are a working landscape, where menus take shape and a mille-feuille of ecosystems thrive.

Cucumbers will soon hang beneath the greenhouse counters like chandeliers

Springtime here is fragrant, textured and fleeting. The beds are beginning to burst, calendula, borage and nasturtiums pushing their way through the soil. Their flowers will make their way into salads and possets and perhaps the odd fool at the Refectory. These, along with the chai flowers and deep-red linearia, bloom not only for beauty and flavour but for the pollinators. Their shapes, wide open, inviting and wildly varied across the gardens, are essential to the biodiversity of this land.

Herbs are thriving too. Mint, basil and kaffir lime are amongst those ready to be plucked by guests on a botanical foraging walk before cocktail hour.

Layers of life exist across the farm and its eco-systems

Broad beans are next in and cucumbers will be ready by June, hanging beneath the greenhouse countertops like green chandeliers. Tomatoes will follow, then courgettes and buzzy sichuan peppercorns. We’re piled high with lettuces and kale, both having grown in abundance. We’re still pulling rhubarb too, which is bringing springtime tang to our desserts. Everything here is grown to be used, whether that may be in the kitchen, in the suites or in the cocktails.

In the fruit garden, we grow in polycultures. Fruit trees dollop together in communities that thrive, each looking after their own rather than sitting solitary and soldier-like in strict rows. It’s all under sewn by nasturtiums that create a carpet of edible flowers, holding back the weeds and helping with pollination.

We’re planting for the months ahead

Curious guests are always welcome to wander the gardens, or even help. Already we see a shared desire to reconnect, to understand how things grow, what they need and how they shape the flavours that are enjoyed later on in the kitchen. The desire too, to get our hands dirty again.

The garden is waking up and we’re planting now for the months ahead. We hope you’ll come and see it for yourself.