Castle Garden Summer 2011

This summer was our second growing season and this year we had more areas of the garden created, more produce, more flowers, more herbs and more wildlife and people!

Our resident medicinal horticulturalist Quinn, created more amazing herb gardens at the front and planted a lavender hedge. Min our terracing queen, got stuck in on the hill and terraced her way down filling it with bee and human loving herbs and flowers, which she has been maintaining and harvesting from all summer.

In August, we had our first harvest of honey. (about 33 jars which all sold out within a few days!)

Barry, our loyal garden soldier researched, designed, dug and created our pond, which within a few days attracted some of the Castle wildlife.

We had a go at growing hops. We grew 1.5 metre square of wheat and it was scythed, threshed and winnowed, and we got 1.17kg of wheat.

Our young fruit trees and shrubs started to produce a little bit of fruit, and we ate raspberries, strawberries, apricots, apples, pears, plums and figs!

The Castle Cafe team have been harvesting and using green leaf salads, tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, peppers, onions, garlic, carrot, beetroot, chard, sweetcorn, courguettes, lots and lots of french beans (purple and yellow ones) and herbal teas. There was lots of grass mowing using austrian scythes. We had more castle staff come out to use and work in the garden, turning compost, harvesting, weeding, watering, making bunting and decorations for the garden party. We've been doing some outdoor cooking on our rocket stove and made tempura and chips from garden vegetables. We've also been busy harvesting seeds and herbs to dry for use in the cafe over winter.

All in all it has been a very productive summer and thanks to everyone who took part to make it look even more amazing this year!

Environmental Report 2010

Each year, we take on the mammoth task of looking at the environmental impact of everything we do - from hosting parties to buying loo roll and everything in between. You can download a copy of our report here. Be warned it's a big piece of work.
If you don't want to go through it all, here are the main points:
- Our carbon footprint has gone down slightly by about 6% to 117.09 tonnes CO2e. This isn't the dramatic decrease we'd hoped for, but we're still laying the groundwork for the big changes to come.
- In 2010 we opened The Castle Shop. This not only has diversified our business and improved the customer experience, but it's also given us a chance to engage with suppliers about sustainability.
- 2010 was also our first full year with the Castle Garden. Highlights include a bountiful summer crop, two beehives, community mini-plots, a huge composter, a swale to filter grey water and lots of digging!
- We've installed electricity monitors on all our circuits so we can see exactly where our electricity is being used.

If you want more- just download the report.

Happy reading,

Audrey