Cherrie's Oct 26 Notes
It’s all autumn colour and apples this week and news of a wonderful opportunity for one local gardener to join the team at Raymond Blanc’s new heritage garden at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons ... how exciting is that?
First on the list for this week’s programme was a visit to Ann Fitzsimon’s small studio garden at The Uncommon Garden Company.
We were there to find out which plants are good for bringing welcome flashes of vivid colour in the garden at this time of year.
It’s not all burnished golds, reds and bronzes as the leaves change colour and fall (although they are of course what autumn is all about).
Among those on Ann’s list were Verbena Bonariensis which bridges the gap between late summer and now, it’s tiny whorls of purple flowers waving aloft on tall, impossibly skinny stems.
She also selected the deeper indigo flowers of the Monkshood which look, I always think, like slightly sinister Delphiniums.
Then there were bright pink Nerines, which love their roots packed tightly and baked hard in the summer, all spidery flowers on spindly stems.
And the grasses like the elegant Stipa Tenuissima which gives the garden a ghostly element as it ebbs and flows in the border on blowy autumn days.
Hydrangea Quercifolia and Bergenia made their way on to Ann’s list too, because of the magical changing nature of the foliage which changes from zesty green to burgundy and gold as autumn does it’s thing.
The magic of the harvest never fails to blow me away so a trip to see Barbara Pilcher at Lisdoonan to talk about apples and pumpkins was going to be a real treat.
It was a perfect autumn day when I called, dry and bright, but we recorded inside the house in the warmth of the kitchen where the table was arrayed with squash, marrows, gourds and apples, displayed on wooden plates and looking just the ticket.
First though we headed into the pantry where Barbara had been juicing assorted windfalls and where in a trice, some more apples were quartered and popped into the chute for me to sample.
What a hardship, I don’t think!
The taste, dear readers, was indiscribably fresh and wonderful. The juice tasted of spring and autumn, of sunshine and rain, of green and gold in equal measure.
And the apples which made their way into the mix were an assortment of varieties which you will never find on a supermarket shelf or in a greengrocer’s window.
Among them, “Pilcher’s Pippin” grown lovingly from seed by Barbara’s mother-in-law and grafted on to suitable rootstock to create the Pilcher family’s very own apple tree.
What could be better than that?
You can hear more about the pumpkins and the squash and the apples on the table (and in the juicer) on this week’s programme.
Before I go though, congratulations and good luck to local gardener David Love Cameron, who is off across the water to join the garden team at Raymond Blanc’s celebrated restaurant at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons.
David, who comes from County Antrim, has been named as Raymond Blanc’s first garden scholarship winner and he will be involved in the process of designing, building and planning a prestigious new Heritage Garden at Le Manoir.
Also involved in the project are the national charity, Garden Organic, formerly The Henry Doubleday Association who are dedicated to promoting organic gardening methods, preserving knowledge and safeguarding rare varieties once commonly grown in these islands.
David teaches at Horizon West in Antrim - a charity which specialises in helping people recover from mental health illnesses.
On the day of our visit, the garden team who call themselves The Muddy Minds, were busy planting an orchard.
We look forward to visiting again to see the orchard as it matures and also to hearing more about David’s gardening adventures at Le Manoir.
We’ll keep you posted.
