The Potager at Scampston Hall

It’s been a while since our weekend in Malton and I’ve been meaning to share more from our visit to the Walled Gardens and Parkland at Scampston Hall. I took many photos (no surprise there) and so I’ll be sharing a series of posts from our visit finally - it’s a great place to visit with a fab cafe too, so if you’re close by and considering a visit, then definitely go.

The Walled Garden was designed by Piet Oudolf in 1999, and while Oudolf is often now imitated this garden remains his largest private commission in the UK. There are twelve sections to the walled garden, and you know how much I love a potager, or a vegetable garden, so that’s where we’re starting.

Along with the cut flower garden, the vegetable garden supplies the house and cafe with a range of fresh flowers and vegetables. As with any productive garden the planting schemes change regularly, but isn’t that what we love about gardens?

Any gate inviting you to come in in a garden is a welcome sight, and this one especially so with it’s modern block design by local craftsman Peter Coates. I seem to have cut my photo off though, so it’s not easy to see that it contains the word Yat, which is the Yorkshire dialect for gate. A gate with meaning, as well as good looks - yes, I’m definitely coming in!

Wow. I so love a productive garden, and when we visited in September many veg plots are at their peak, so it’s a great time to visit.

Just look at that Ruby Chard, I’d forgotten how beautiful and structural they can be - I definitely want these in my garden, even though they’re one of the veg that MOH has been known to turn his nose up at, though thinking again that could be due to the sheer volume of chard we grew when we had our allotment!

I found two of my favourite pumpkins here too, this Turks Turban and the bluer skinned Crown Prince. The third that I’d add to my favourite pumpkin list is the Red Kuri or Onion Squash which I have managed to grow in my previous garden. I’m not sure if I’ll find a space for pumpkins here - they ramble a lot - but if I can I will.

There’s nothing better than fresh sweetcorn on the cob is there, and none can be fresher than these - I can’t wait for the local sweetcorn this year, though there’s a good few months before I’ll see these in the farm shops, let’s hope there’s plenty of sun this summer to make them extra sweet.

I was pleased to see the red chicory growing in a Yorkshire garden - we’re a bit further south, so by rights that means we should be able to grow them too. I love their colour and structure, and I also love them in a blue cheese risotto which MOH makes - it’s the best flavoured risotto, most I can give or take but this one I’ll always have, thank you very much. Many years back I remember we scoured our part of South London for a red chicory without a huge amount of success, but times have changed and I see them much more often now, but to grow my own - and have that risotto almost on tap - now that would be the dream.

I’m also a sucker for photographing cabbages with their characterful, and clearly very tasty, nibbled leaves. I’ve long given up on my long held dream of growing many varieties of cabbages in perfectly straight rows (as once seen at the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall), and would settle for a couple of slightly less nibbled ones that could end up in the kitchen at some point!

The Walled Garden has so much more to see, and not everything that you’d expect to see so look out for further posts in the coming weeks to see what else this fantastic space has to offer.

Post Comment Love 20 - 22 March

Hello there, welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a relaxed, friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed, and if you see older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

Hasn’t it been great to see the sun and feel its warmth? We took the opportunity to pop over to Sunny Hunny to see mum and dad, and it was very sunny in Hunstanton that day. We had a walk along the sea front and ended the day with fish and chips, which always seems to taste better at the coast somehow.

Let’s hope the warmer weather hangs around, have a great week.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

An impromptu Flying Geese tote

A couple of weekends ago I didn’t make it along to my patchwork group as planned - it’s a long story, but water in your heat pump isn’t a good thing as we discovered, and so our morning was a little disrupted trying to sort that out. It seems it was a morning for disruptions as there was also some confusion getting into the village hall for the patchwork group too, they did get in but I decided to stay home instead of arriving a fair bit later, and so I had my own ‘sew day’ - which was fabulous.

I’d already decided to test out my Flying Geese rulers to see if this method worked better for me, and I stuck with that. I’d made some Flying Geese way back for my first charity quilt, and while on the whole that method worked, it wasn’t foolproof and some of my geese had an extra piece of fabric at their point. As I’m planning to make a larger quilt full of these blocks I wanted to perfect my approach.

A first attempt, then progress

I’d pulled some fabrics from my stash which included the leftover fabric from the first vinyl fronted pouches I made and some plains: the blue from one of MOH’s old work shirts (and my Stars and Spots charity quilt) and the grey from an old duvet cover which I’ve used in multiple charity quilts already.

My first attempt wasn’t so good!

I misinterpreted the instructions, and so I went again. This time with a lot more success, thankfully or else it would have been a long and frustrating day!

And then I couldn’t stop. Geese of almost every size appeared alongside those first attempts, which I think have a certain charm, and which I was also keen to keep, and use somehow. Having accomplished my plan of successfully using my Flying Geese rulers, and sooner than I expected I needed a new plan before I became overrun with geese.

A new plan

I could have started on my long awaited Teal Flying Geese quilt, but I was keen to avoid abandoning my test geese. With a flash of inspiration I boldly decided to make a small tote bag, like you do.

With the layouts decided, and an extra strip here and there and a few more geese summonsed to the fray, I had a sort-of plan and some potential bag shaped pieces. At this point my sewing got even more experimental when I decided to sew strips of the fabric together to make patchwork effect geese (look at the two end geese on the long piece above to see how they worked).

I think my favourite one is where I’ve incorporated the selvedge with the fabric’s name, but also an important message re saving bees.

Those wonky geese still make me smile!

And so does the very 1970s lilac material I chose for the bag’s lining. I’m sure we had duvet covers that were similar back then, most likely yellow, orange, blue and pink variants, but not lilac. This material I picked up at a stash sale became it reminded me of those long ago duvet covers, and it’s perfect for this project too.

At this point I was just hoping that my very rough plan for assembling the bag would work. I’d used ‘soft and stable’ bag lining for the longest piece - I bought it for another project which I haven’t got to yet, but thankfully have enough for this as well - and leftover quilt wadding for the bag’s sides.

Using plenty of clips I proved my construction theory - the bag stands on its own thanks to the soft and stable, and the insert piece was the right size. I really do love it when a plan, and an impromptu one at that, comes together!

I’d even thought to add an internal pocket, and impressed myself by not actually quilting it in place. Instead adding it after the quilting, hand sewing it in place. It’s a big pocket though and to avoid it gaping I added a popper, lilac on the inside and blue on the outside.

Two needles down

Having tested out quilting and sewing together scraps of the bag lining, I was ready to actually construct the bag. First piece joined successfully, the second piece less so.

Clunk. Broken needle.

After much searching I cleared the broken needle, including some that remained in the bag’s seams. I was ready to go again, with my new needle.

Clunk. Broken needle. Again.

This time I was back up and running much quicker, but decided to skip the bit that was giving me trouble, which was thankfully right at the bottom of the bag (I hand stitched the inch I skipped later), and then the second piece was joined and I had the body of my bag.

New needles were ordered, and two straps were made. Instinctively I used interfacing on the bag’s straps before sewing them into tubes and turning them through, and I caught myself smiling when I realised how far I’d come since my bag making course. Back then I wouldn’t have thought to use interfacing, let alone know which to use or be able to identify fusible interfacing from the sew in type.

(FYI fusible interfacing has small bobbles or glue dots on one side, make sure that’s on your fabric, not your iron!)

Straps made, and thankfully both still the same length, they were attached to the body, and my bag was made. It took me longer than a day to complete, even allowing for dithering.

I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out, and while it’s not huge it’s perfect for what I wanted. And that ‘save the bees’ selvedge, well that worked out pretty well too.

With those ‘Flying Geese’ rulers mastered, there’s a very strong chance that my Teal Flying Geese quilt could be up next!