With the warmer months just around the corner, it’s finally time to plant out the seedlings that have been lovingly propagated at our nursery at Clayhill in the New Forest.
Our nursery has been running for around 10 years now and we predict that, this year, it will produce more than a quarter of a million seedlings – all of which will be planted across our PIG Kitchen Gardens from Cornwall to Kent.
Most recently in the Kitchen Gardens, we’ve been planting tomatoes, peppers, agretti and beans… all of which started as nursery seedlings to replace the last of the overwintered crops in our veg beds.
While our plants were dormant over the winter, our garden teams certainly weren’t! Earlier this February, we rolled up our sleeves with our friends at Sapling Spirits to create a nut orchard (or a “nuttery” as we call it), at THE PIG-near Bath.
We planted a wide variety of trees including cobnuts, filberts, almonds, walnuts and sweet chestnuts – they’re flanked on one side by a foraging hedge made up solely of native species that all produce an edible fruit or nut. In the future, we’ll be able to use the produce from these trees in various dishes in our kitchen at THE PIG-near Bath, and even as delicious syrups for our cocktails behind our bars.
In March, we also started work building the Kitchen Gardens for our newest PIG in the litter, THE PIG-and The Village Pub! We’ll have more exciting progress to share from these veg beds very soon…
If you’re heading to any of the horticultural shows this summer, you may just run into some of our PIG gardeners on tour. We will be busy building show gardens at BBC Gardener’s World Live at the NEC, Birmingham (13th–16th June), and at RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival in London (11th–22nd June).
We’ll also be helping our friends at Alitex Greenhouses decorate their stand at RHS Chelsea Flower Show (21st–25th May). If you do see us, come and say hello! We always love to get down in the weeds and be nerdy about all things planting and gardening.
See you in the sunshine!
- Ollie
