Steal This Look: Walnuts Farm Kitchen Garden - Gardenista
Photographs via Light Locations, except where noted. If we’ve seemed a little distracted lately, blame the kitchen garden at Walnuts Farm. But from the moment we spotted this five-acre sprawl of a garden (located about an hour’s drive from London), we knew the thing to do would be to grow dinner. We immediately pulled out graph paper and a ruler, and are sketching our own version of Walnuts Farm: with crushed gravel paths... ...of course, and bent-willow fences, and enough kinds of loose-leaf lettuces to take us through the salad season. Built in East Sussex about two centuries ago, the brick farmhouse is surrounded by gardens, meadows, and woodlands. A galvanized water howser isn’t as efficient as a drip irrigation system, but it’s more fun to say. With pigeonholes, a dovecote offers plenty of shelter for nesting birds to lay eggs. You may prefer a freestanding birdhouse. The Lead Roof Buckingham Dovecote can accommodate up to six pairs of nesting doves and comes painted inFarrow & Ball’s Old White (for £675); the Milford is £395; both at Saville’s. Image via Eat a Duck I Must. We spotted these heads of cauliflower in the kitchen garden that belongs to The French Laundry in Yountville... ...California, where the harvest informs chef Thomas Keller’s menus. Cauliflower seeds; from $1.75 to $3 per packet, fromLandreth. Flexible willow rods, tied with twine, delineate the border between plants and paths. Many varieties and colors of Willow Rods are available from Blue Stem, for $35 per bundle of ten. Even with a drip irrigation system, there will be water emergencies. Low trellises are useful for training peas…or edible nasturtiums, which we were shading in, around the time the children finally wandered into the kitchen to ask, “What’s for dinner?” Each segment of The Low Vine Trellis, $78 from Terrain, is 42 inches long. “Go see what looks good in the garden,” we told the children, doodling rows of Red Velvet Lettuce ($3.50 per packet of seeds, available seasonally from Landreth). Image via Eat a Duck I Must. Image via Eat a Duck I Must. Then we added purple kale, for good measure. Purple kale and a purple hose—what are the odds? Image via Eat a Duck I Must. A few minutes later, the children skipped back inside, carrying a basket of kale and lettuces and artichokes. We sighed (there was still the question of dinner looming), and put away the graph paper. And as the sun set on Walnuts Farm, we walked to the refrigerator, stood at the open door—falling into another sort of trance altogether—and wondered: Can children be trained to like purple kale? For another picturesque English garden, see “Season of Mist: Ben Pentreath’s Dorset Garden.”