One of the great things of travelling and doing these talks is all the fantastic people you meet. Wolfgang Palme (and his lovely wife Angelika who also acted as my interpreter in Schiltern and Vienna) was one of these! I met them first at my talk in Schiltern and I was then very much looking forward to visiting City Farm where they run courses and have developed a diversity garden for children, including several of the perennials in my book! Wolfgang has also written a great looking book on harvesting vegetables during the winter (I include a few sample pages in the album below!)
I look forward to collaborating more in the future!!
See also http://www.cityfarm.wien/
Google Earth image of city farm with the site of the diversity garden and the Kammermeieri, a historical building where my lecture was held!
Wolfgang Palme and myself after my talk at Arche Noah in Schiltern!
Wolfgang had made a special effort of decorating the entrance, stairs and lecture theatre with perennial veggies! Here’s Hosta!
ALlium tuberosum
…and this artichoke on the stairs!
The lecture room!
Kammermeierei
The diversity garden
Wolfgang’s book on winter harvested vegetables!
…includes Silene!
…and this sowing plan for harvesting in the winter months must have been a labour of love!
Mission accomplished! I arrived here in Austria over a,week ago! 3 garden tours and two seminars on and I’m now sitting with some porcini pasta and some Austrian beer in Saltzburg before my train back to Vienna and home tomorrow. After 7 hours in Saltzburg, I still haven’t heard any Mozart or The Sound of Music! Thanks to Arche Noah for inviting me
A few pictures from my first three days in Schiltern and Austrian Seed Savers organisation Arche Noah’s amazing show gardens. The main show gardens are in the village of Schiltern in Langenlois, an important wine growing area, with warm, dry summers and relatively mild winters.
I’m doing a series of talks and garden guided tours this week starting here in Schiltern, then Vienna and finally in the Alps near Salzburg!
Seed art at the gate!
The show gardens are in the grounds of an old cloister..
The sales area has a great selection with many perennial edibles including Crithmum, Angelica dahurica etc.!
Purple mitsuba for sale
Angelica dahurica for sale
Caraway (karve) on sale
Hosta on sale as a perennial vegetable!
Toona sinensis
Sea kale (Crambe maritima)
Hablitzia tamnoides
Curly whirly onions, Allium senescens var glaucum
Crithmum maritimum
Rumex scutatus glaucus
Impressive elderberry with my host Claudia and organiser of my tour! Thank you!!
Bee hive
Library
Great outdoors restaurant
Lunch: risotto with an old grain! Did they make a special effort for me?
Isolation tent!
Perennial rye (from, I think, Tim Peters)
Old fruit trees
The countryside and village…
A demonstration of breeding lettuces
Sea Kale on one of two perennial beds
Asphodeline lutea…edible flowers and the tubers were traditionally cooked and eaten with cooked figs by the ancient Greeks and Romans according to Cornucopia II
Scorzonera for seed
Diplotaxis erucoides (wasabi rocket) has an excellent wasabi like taste
Winterkefe pea is one I’ve grown for several years (originally over winter in my old greenhouse). It originates here at Arche Noah
A row of Hablitzia is growing slowly and is maybe not too happy in the heat… shadier place would probably be better!
Catawissa onion (etasjeløk)
Rumex scutatus glauca
Oxyria digyna, mountain sorrel seems to grow well in the lowlands too!
Nice to see Sideritis syriaca, Greek mountain tea in the herb garden
Arch Noah seed packets in the shop
Allium moly (gul-løk) is from the mountains of Spain and is a great edimental
My talk was on Sunday in the cloister buildings
Typha (cattails / dunkjevle) in the courtyard pond! Supermarket of the swamps!
New friends after the talk..chef Johan Reisinger top left, Wolfgang Palme top right (vegetable researcher at the Horticultural College and Research Institute Schönbrunn, Vienna) and his good lady Angelika Palme who did an excellent job at translating!!
On Monday 12th June, I joined an informative tour of the Arche Noah show gardens lead by the head gardener. The tour was for staff and guides.
Nettle water with perennial kale Ewiger kohl (Eeuwige moes)
Chick peas
Broad beans are difficult to grow due to a number of pests and diseases
Millet for a future drier cilmate
I also visited the seed bank…
Humidity instrument for checking that the humidity is low enough for long term storage
Seeds are both stored in sealed jars…
Seeds are both stored in sealed jars…
Arche Noah are in the course of changing database (Access) as they have outgrown it!
Wonderful shot from last night’s guided tour around the garden taken by WW (my Wonderful Wwoofer this week) who climbed onto the roof for what could have been mistaken for a drone shot….
See also these Facebook albums:
I was very pleased to be invited to give a talk organised by the Curtis Museum in Alton, Hampshire, UK, not far from where I grew up in Eastleigh, Hants.
In my book I introduce the Hampshire towns of Alresford (watercress), Selborne (Gilbert White and sea kale) and Alton as the “Hampshire perennial vegetable triangle” or the UK hotspot of perennial vegetable domestication. Alton is included as the home of botanist William Curtis, who was Praefectus Horti at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London in the 1770s. He was also a friend of Gilbert White! He wrote a pamphlet, ‘Directions for the culture of the Crambe maritima or Sea Kale, for the use of the Table’ in 1799 to bolster efforts in introducing it as a market vegetable.
See the album of pictures from a wander around Alton with Sheila John of the Curtis museum, edimentals tour of the Allen Gallery garden and later talk there! See the album below!
Other related posts:
On the bus between Winchester and Alton, a sign pointing towards Gilbert White’s House (and also Jane Austen’s)!
Wandering around Alton with my host Sheila John, a charity shop with a Hosta plant for sale…
On the road where William Curtis the botanist lived, a Wisteria in full flower…had to resist having a taste of the flowers ;)
William Curtis’ house and Sheila John of the Curtis Museum
The chalk River Wey with wild watercress
The next talk after mine was about the Watercress Line!
Watercress had in the past been cultivated on the Flood Meadows near the centre of Alton…
The Flood Meadows in Alton where watercress had been cultivated in the past
The Flood Meadows in Alton where watercress had been cultivated in the past
Brooklime, Veronica beccabunga in the flood meadows
The Curtis Museum
The Curtis Museum
Entrance to the Curtis Museum
The venue for the talk, the Allen Gallery (after artist W. H: Allen); see https://hampshireculturaltrust.org.uk/allen-gallery
I lead an edimentals walk for a half hour in the garden before the talk. Sheila John showed me around beforehand and we found a number of excellent edibles :)
A little herb garden!
Viola spp.
Tulips out!
One of the staff had brought a Hosta plant along to my talk ;)
I was shown the collection of information about William Curtis the Botanist…
I prepared a couple of slides specially as I was at the Curtis Museum, this included this picture I took at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London where Curtis was demonstrator of plants and Praefectus Horti from 1771-1777! The Curtis Border at Chelsea celebrates some of the plants we associate with the man and with reference on the plant label to his Botanical Magazine! It seems that Curtis introduced day lily Hemerocallis fulva (one of the 80 in my book) to the UK :)
Slide showing the front of Curtis’ sea kale pamphlet, some interesting quotes from it and a picture of a sea kale pot and sign telling about the pamphlet at Chelsea!
I finished my last day of work as an oceanographer by visiting head office in Wallingford, UK. We were finished by lunchtime, so I visited the University of Oxford Botanical Garden nearby, the oldest botanical garden established in 1621 as a garden of medicinal plants. Here’s an album of edimentals I found during my short visit!
The entrance to the Oxford Botanical Garden
Smilax sarsaparilla (S. glauca) from North America has edible shoots and roots….
Hosta en masse!
North American Ostrich Fern
Hosta “Devon Green”
Trachystemon orientalis, see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?page_id=1269
Erythronium “Pagoda”, one of the most vigorous varieties in this genus for growing in the edimental woodland garden
Crambe cordifolia is one of the 80 in my book Around the World in 80 plants
Crambe maritima, sea kale in bud
Pyrus cordata
Not many of the plant signs say anything about edibility, so I was surprised that this waterleaf mentions this (also in my book)
Worcesterberry is similar to Jostaberry but has thorns
Cornus mas variegata
Loquat
Asimina triloba, Papaw, a North American fairly hardy fruit
Asimina triloba
California bay, Umbellularia californica : would love one of these as a house plant!
Fuchsia excorticata, tree fuchsia of New Zealand and an important pre-European fruit tree for the Maori
Ammi visnaga, toothpick plant, has also edible aromatic leaves and seeds used as a spice in Egyptian mish (a soft cheese); see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mish
Rheum “Cawood Castle”, a culinary rhubarb
Ammi majus also has seeds that have been used as a spice..
Zanthoxylum piperitum, sansho or Japanese pepper, a very important plant in Japan. I visited a farm producing the leaves for restaurants during my 2016 study trip!
Boehmeria tricuspis (related to nettles) has edible shoots, growing here in a woodland garden with Hosta
Shoots of Japanese ginger (Zingiber mioga)
Edible Japanese thistle, Cirsium nipponicum
Aster glehnii, one of the foraged Asters in Japan (for the young shoots)
Kadsura japonica is a rare climber with edible fruit
Berberis valdiviana
Quince “Meech’s Prolific”
Tulips (edible petals) with dark-leaved cow parsley “Ravenswing”
Camassias, important food plants for Native Americans
Gunnera
Ostrich fern and Gunnera
Ostrich Fern, very commonly grown as an ornamental
Ostrich fern, Rheum palmatum and Gunnera
Darmera peltata shoots are edible
Indian salad (Hydrophyllum virginianum) with ostrich fern and Gunnera
Indian salad (Hydrophyllum virginianum) with ostrich fern
Emerging Hosta, ready to dine on!
Camassia and tulips
Lemon balm
Archangelia angelica (the sign says that the root adds an earthy, floral flavour to gin)
Chives “Lady Halifax’s Form”
Hops
Baskets for protecting young plants against woodpigeons
Sea kale / rhubarb forcing pots with, presumably, sea kale ribbed for leaves by woodpigeons
Not an edible Aster, unfortunately…
Zanthoxylum simulans, Chinese pepper, another great forest garden plant, where it is hardy!
Morus alba, silk mulberry
Poncirus trifoliata, trifoliate orange
Poncirus trifoliata, trifoliate orange
Hovenia dulcis, oriental raisin tree
Mahonia aquifolium, Oregon grape
Tulbaghia alliacea, society garlic from South Africa
Late April 2017 and I finally got round to visit some folks in South Hampshire who I’d met at the Walled Kitchen Garden Forum weekend at Croome in 2015! I love enthusiastic people who are willing to take risks…Tim Phillips is one of these…in his own words “His once abandoned 19th century kitchen garden in Hampshire provides a fantastic environment for…Chardonnay, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc vines. The combination of gravel soils, Lymington’s maritime climate and the thermal properties of the walls offer a unique vine-growing opportunity from which both still and sparkling wines are crafted”.. (see http://www.charlieherring.com/)
On the day of my visit, Tim had been up all night keeping his vines from freezing by burning wood fires in the vineyard….this strategy seems to have saved the crop from a complete failure of the 2017 vintage :) This problem wasn’t restricted to England but also famous wine growing areas in France: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/29/in-pictures-french-farmers-use-fire-to-try-to-save-their-vineyards.html
I look forward to returning in a few years to view you sea kale production areas ;)
I first met Tim’s world at the Walled Kitchen Garden Forum weekend at Croome in 2015…here’s him adressing the enthusiastic crowd!
Tim produces Charlie Herring wines from the vineyard!
…and I was lucky enough to be given a couple of bottles of Hampshire wine, here shown atop my own walled garden (the world’s lowest) which used to serve as the base of my greenhouse…
Arriving at the vineyard..it is much higher on the outside than the inside! A couple of old bricklayers are working on restoring the walls, removing the invading ivy!
Tim had been up most of the previous night burning wood in various places in an attempt to drive the frost away…Tim told me after that about 80% of shoots had survived, so not as big a disaster as had been feared…
The beginnings of Tim’s Hampshire Tea enterprise!
A great old organic apple tree at one end of the walled garden!
Windows would have been used here to ripen fruit early..
Tim told me that this Swiss chard kept on coming back…perennial or seeding itself?
Another apple tree
This is where we’ve decided Tim will grow Sea Kale ;)
Cardoon and nettle infested compost heap :) I teached TIm how to eat raw nettle ;)
The raspberries had been frosted…
There’s a wonderful sunken greenhouse in the walled garden
The greenhouse…
…with a Robin nesting at one end!
Ongoing wall restoration…
Perennial vegetables fit well with the perennial vines, tea and apples!
Charlie Herring wines…
After lunch at a local pub, when we were joined by Susan Campbell, who I was visiting in the afternoon, Tim took us to his winery and adjacent land!
I loved the wallpaper, old maps reflecting Tim’s unexpected past of motorbike racer (Isle of Man) and mountain walking maps
…including a map showing my next stop at Susan Campbell’s wonderful house and garden (including sea kale yard) on the Solent!
Tim’s pond with Yellow flag, Bulrushes (supermarket of the swamps), water mint etc.
Susan found some St. George’s Mushrooms, although a bit old!
Tim wanted to show me this amazing hop that he’d used for making a wild hop beer!
….and edible hop shoots coming up all over the place!
Hop shoots
Hops climbing over the hedge
…and Hampshire’s Secret Garden…and, no, I didn’t get to see what was beyond…I can imagine though :)
Thank you to Charles “Mr. Accordion Pissenlit” Frandelion for asking me over to Saint-Pascal (in the Kamouraska municipality) east of Quebec City and entertaining me with a great day enjoying the nature of his area and visiting the headquarters of La société des plantes, run by the legendary Patrice Fortier (www.lasocietedesplantes.com), where he works! Patrice was sadly in Italy…we will meet next time!
Charles with his drying racks
Crithmum maritimum overwintering in Charles’ basement
Anchusa azurea
Digging out more room for plants under the house :)
Eastern Quebec is colder than Ottawa and Montreal and there was much more snow
Charles’ root cellar, shared with a couple of other people
We could barely squeeze around the door!
Veggie storage boxes
Sprouting radishes for seed…we ate these for dinner
View of the St. Lawrence
Charles veggie and medicinal plant gardens
Mulleins
Charles’ native american sweat lodge!
Hot stones were placed in the sweat lodge
An old apple orchard
Cedar shingle clad farm building
We stopped by the road for a sample of fresh sugar maple sap! Delicious and sweet enough as it is!
Alle of sugar maples
Angelica had gone wild in the garden and was appeariing green as the snow retreated!
Udo (Aralia cordata): Patrice Fortier and Telsing Andrews are probably the two best sources of perennial vegetables in Canada…
Angelica stalks
Wonderful neat rows of dandelions ready for harvest in the polytunnel!
Imagination needed for what was growing under the snow….here there was a bed of camas (Camassia)
Last year flowers of a species of Ash…male and female plants on separate plants
