Iford on Gardeners World: Friday 22 Oct 2010 - 8.30pm

A little flurry of excitement, combined with a small dose of 'warm feeling inside'... Iford will appear on BBC Gardeners World this Friday 22nd October at 8.30pm.

We were delighted to welcome presenter Joe Swift, along with a charming crew and their lady Director a week ago, to film a piece related to evergreens, and their use in planting schemes.  Sadly the sun only came out for the BBC during their last hour of filming, but we're very excited to see how this experienced team has captured the essence of the garden during what has proved to be a colourfully dramatic autumn.

For the team at Iford, both for the residents but more especially for the gardening team, to be visited (completely unprompted really) by the UK's prime-time gardening programme, is a matter of no little pride and a lovely surprise too!

Thank you Gardeners World - you're always welcome.

For more information on the broadcast or to listen again (if you're busy on a Friday night...):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/

Before and after: putting the patio garden to bed

In Peto's patio garden at Iford, texture and scent are integral to the planting scheme through the use of pelargoniums and geraniums with their wonderfully textured leaves, which give off a range of smells from the peppery to the minty.  Peto's great maxim was that one should never allow either the structure or the planting to dominate, rather it is the balance between the two which ensures a pleasing balance to the design, and it is with this in mind that we maintain and design the planting in this area.

As winter approaches, it is clearly necessary to prepare the beds before the cold arrives.  With a potential light frost forecast for this week, Tuesday was tidying-up day.  Owing to the fact that it is nearing the end of the growing season and the plants are often somewhat due a haircut in any case, it is always something of a stark contrast in terms of a 'before and after'.

Cuttings are taken for next year's pots and bedding, and the rest goes off to the compost heap to be returned later in the winter as top-dressing.  So here is the before and after comparison.  Can you spot the difference?!  (sorry about the contrast... the sun came out today!)

Before

After

Autumn colour - a photo-montage

Autumn is one of my favourite times of year; there's nothing quite like the emotional hit you get from the shimmering of soft shallow light off yellowing leaves - melancholic perhaps, but ever so romantic at Iford!

Here are some images from this year, mostly taken this morning, some a week or so ago.  And don't forget, Iford's gardens are open for two more Sundays this year - on the 24th and 31st October, 2-5pm.

Bedding-up for the winter

Whilst people are getting their borders ready for bed in preparation for winter dormancy, it's a good time too to be moving those fruit and veg for next year.  In this little album, taken early last week, Robert and his team prepare new beds for asparagus and strawberries in the walled garden using an excellent load of manure from the estate's stableyard.

 The ground, marked out and aerated, is covered in manure.

Topsoil from alongside the bed is heaped over the manure to leave a clean, fertile bed.

Into this were planted asparagus plants - they always look so weedy like this, don't they?  But what a vegetable, especially the first young sprigs of the year, briefly fried off in olive oil and peppercorns, with a squeeze of lemon and slithers of parmesan... mmm.

With the final dressing of manure over the top, and it's done.

Planted next door, the strawberries will of course become next year's jam for the tearoom, and after Susan's triumph at the fête this year, who knows what heights next year's bottled delights will bring!  But you can only get it at Iford with a warm, just-from-the-oven scone or inside a Victoria Sponge.

Autumn leaves

Well, you certainly know it's autumn when...

Apples are falling, ripe damsons soften on the tree (looking forward to 'jamming' those), a misty 5 degrees greets you when you get up, and the first colours start to change in the garden.  And yet, summer seems somehow to be clinging on, for when the sun is out, it's fairly warm.  Still, it won't be long before we're raking and blowing the leaves off the lawns daily - a broadly thankless, but crucial task to avoid damage to the sward.

Mowing day again

The near perfect combination of sunshine and rain, with moderate temperatures has meant the lawns are putting on a lot of late summer growth this year.  Today was mowing day again, generally a Thursday at Iford, and the full team was on the case.

Here Tom (pictured), who is currently studying at Lackham College and undertaking part of his practical training within the team at Iford, creates some excellent 'lines' on the rear terrace.

We're jammin'...

Around this time of year we have what has become a tradition where we wander out to look at the orchard and despair at "the amount of fruit which will no doubt once again go to waste and wouldn't it be nice if we could do something with it, but we're a bit busy this year what with the farm harvest etc. so we'll have to plan better for next year".  Well, whilst not entirely ready to embrace full fruit harvest usage from the orchard on site, I have this year tried to break the pattern, experimentally at least.

Jam. 
It all started a couple of years ago when my now-mother-in-law Pauline gave us some delicious raspberries from her own production and since we were unable to eat them all (and boy, did we have a go at it!) we decided to make them into jam.  It proved so easy that I concluded even a novice like me could do this, and so now, two years on, I have cleaned out our local Sainsbury shelves of jam sugar and I'm experimenting with the harvest at Iford.

What has surprised me the most, I think, is discovering the variety of what we have growing not only in the orchard and kitchen garden but also elsewhere around the estate, in hedgerows, thickets and the like, trees, shrubs and vines which I had never really stopped to appreciate for their full potential.  Mulberries (excellent coulis for lemon sorbet), whitecurrants, shropshire bullace... One such group of trees was pointed out to me by my own mother, Elizabeth, as being suited to jam production - cherry plums - I had, perhaps to my discredit, never even heard of or seen a cherry-plum fruit!

And so Claire and I collected around a kilo and a half of these ripe over-sized cherries, all dangly-down on the branches.  The roe deer had browsed the shelves somewhat, up to about four feet or so, but there were plenty left at loftier heights.  We got them home and being "rather busy"(!) we put them in the freezer.  Today, I got them out (yes, okay, no need for innuendo-filled comments...).

I'll tell you what I did, because the results were reasonably good - anyone with any tips, feel free to chip in with comments.  After removing the grottier ones, they weighed just about 1.3kg.  There's supposed to be a fair amount of pectin in plum-like fruit, and this being prunus cerisifera I supposed we were dealing with the same, so rather than use only jam sugar (i.e. added pectin), I used 1kg of jam sugar with 300g demarera.

The cherries went into the saucepan with a little water.

Over a medium heat they were boiled and broken down (squidging them on the side of the pan with a wooden spoon so they pop can provide endless fun!)...

They were then seived to remove stones and skins first through a [literarily confusing] collander...

...and then a finer seive.  The resultant liquor was an astonishing colour, and went back into the pan with the sugar and a knob of butter.  Apparently this gives a nice shine to the jam when finished (is this right??).

A squeeze of lime seemed a good idea at the time too, both because of the flavour of the mixture and because something told me the citric acid would act as a preservative (Any thoughts??)

The mixture was boiled for about 4 minutes, until the back-of-the-teaspoon trick suggested it was ready, and then poured into sterilised and pre-heated kilner jars (with a bit of overflow... for my breakfast).

Fingers crossed it will set nicely!  I'll report back once we've tried it on a few people.

[UPDATE]
So, the result was that despite positive indications, it was a bit runny.  Re-boiling it was the answer and had I not been over-zealous with the reboiling (which took out a good mug's-worth of water) we'd have had an excellent jelly/jam.  Amazingly clear, which was nice, and of good flavour (especially nice on toast), but unfortunately the consistency of gluey quince cheese... oh well, there's always next year!