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Dear friends, With beautiful photos appearing from walled gardens everywhere, gardens open again for a new season and the hungry gap just about behind us, we are really pleased to let you know about plans for 2023. Ahead of that we first want to send congratulations again to Susan Campbell on being awarded the RHS Veitch Memorial Medal 2023 – given for her dedication and decades of work on, and with walled kitchen gardens. This Award is given ‘for outstanding contribution to the advancement of the science and practice of horticulture’ and is wonderful recognition of everything Susan has done to bring these gardens to the fore and re-establish understanding… Read more »
14th and 15th October 2022 A Retrospective – the Renaissance and Revival of the Walled Kitchen Garden Dear Friends Booking is open! We are very happy to confirm the dates for our long overdue Forum at the wonderful walled kitchen garden at Audley End, Saffron Walden in Essex, a jewel of the English Heritage crown This time we are meeting on Friday and Saturday – on Friday 14th Oct. we will be at Audley End, Head Gardener Louise Ellis and the Kitchen Gardens team with us for the day. We will be visiting other walled gardens on Saturday 15th Oct. To celebrate this 21st anniversary of the Walled Kitchen Gardens… Read more »
Dear Friends Now fully into the new year, there are clear signs that spring isn’t too far away. Peaches, apricots and camellias are starting to flower in glasshouses; snowdrops, cyclamen and hellebores are being celebrated at festivals and open gardens from Cornwall to the highlands of Scotland. The winter months have been far busier than we would expect – the zoom legacy of the last (nearly) two years have enabled many more people to become involved in talks, meetings and conferences such as the Chambord Conversations that wouldn’t have been previously accessible for most. (More information below). We hope you haven’t been too affected by the recent storms, and have… Read more »
European Symposium on the Conservation of Historic Fruit and Kitchen Gardens Dear friends After a very long 18 months we are so glad to hear news from many of you and your gardens, that you have had a more ‘normal’ summer. Visitors have returned and enjoyed seeing and appreciating the extraordinary amount of work that has brought gardens back to great standards despite a very hard start to the year. This year has also seen a few celebrations and we’re delighted to add one from WKGN: our co-founder and chairman, Susan Campbell celebrated a significant birthday this month and we all wish her an enormously Happy Birthday!! It has been… Read more »
We have now completed the first 3 meetings of the Symposium, the forth to follow on the 8th April 2021. There are in excess of 250 participants, including two from as far away as Russia! Since our first meeting in October, the live interpretation has been going well. We are learning to avoid presentations containing video for example because the huge variability in broadband across Europe gives poor results. As we all get better at using Zoom we are taking advantage of the flexibility in the technology to run each meeting. Following a focussed introduction from Susan Campbell, we had three brilliant guest speakers for the December meeting. Hermann van… Read more »
Thank you for opening this update. Many of you will have been wondering whether we will be able to go ahead with the Symposium – and the answer is yes! However with the ongoing difficulties due to the Coronavirus, we have decided to take the event online. We are also hoping that many more of you will be able to join the Symposium this way. Please read on: We are extremely happy to report that the Symposium is enjoying a great response – we already exceed 100 participants. The issue though is that people living outside France are hesitant to commit themselves to travelling to Chambord with the uncertainty surrounding… Read more »
Forum 2020 – Audley End, 3rd October There is still some uncertainty about the possibility of our Forum taking place at Audley End this year, and so we have decided with them to postpone it until some time next year, 2021 But the good news is that an equivalent event, a European Symposium on Kitchen Gardens, organised by The Walled Kitchen Garden Network in conjunction with Les Potagers du France and Les Amis du Potager de Roi is definitely taking place at Chambord in France on the 15th and 16th of October, this year. Contributors include our old friends Jim and Sarah, talking about West Dean, and Chris and Karen,… Read more »
Saturday 3rd October 2020 As you will have read we are returning, by invitation, to Audley End for our Forum this year, to help celebrate the 20th anniversary of reopening of the walled kitchen gardens in 2000, following the extensive restoration by English Heritage of the kitchen garden and glasshouses. It is now also 19 years with since the foundation of the Walled Kitchen Gardens Network by Susan Campbell with the late Fiona Grant. The first WKGN Forum was held at Audley End, on 21st September 2002 For this Forum 2020, we will take a retrospective look at the astounding progress made in the last 20 years, by the Walled… Read more »
