Gardens
Cotesbach Gardens Today
In 2015 the Gardens became a Community Interest Company with aims to produce great food, a healthy environment, and opportunities for training, volunteering and educational visits.
We aim to grow an all year round supply of fresh seasonal organic vegetables in the walled garden for sale in pre-ordered veg boxes or from the Glut Hut in The Stable Yard.
We supply the Yard Cafe, and other nearby restaurants with hand picked produce, and as believers in zero waste, we encourage composting all the leafy leftovers to complete the natural cycle.
Nature sets our pace: we need volunteers!
Please get in touch if you'd like to help whether in the garden, harvesting or getting veg boxes out to customers.
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HISTORY OF COTESBACH GARDENS
Our organic vegetable garden goes back to the time of Rector John Fanshawe who had the walls built in the mid-18th Century to enclose and shelter his new garden.
In Victorian times it grew into an increasingly productive kitchen garden and orchard, feeding successive generations of Marriotts and residents of the estate until after WW1.
In the early 1950s it was run as a market garden, producing tomatoes in particular when it was still possible to compete price-wise with the imported Dutch ones.Convenient supermarkets, refrigeration and easy car transport meant that people no longer relied on a local source of fresh produce. Only more recently are the side effects of this production and consumption model becoming felt, globally, in terms of food security, soil depletion and climate change.
Over the last 25 years we have cultivated the garden and realised the huge benefits of growing our own local food, in terms of quality, seasonal awareness and well-being. Phil Sumption, HDRA organic research professional converted the garden to an organic management system and supplied Naturally Good Food in the Stable Yard (all in his ‘spare time'!), and rebuilt a reputation for Cotesbach Gardens which we seek to continue, ever expanding the range of produce and opportunities on offer.
Tours of the farm and garden can be made by arrangement. Please contact us for more details.