Sarah Kirby - Pythouse Kitchen Garden

Vegatable Plot, Pythouse

In Spring 2023 I was invited to spend a few days at the Pythouse Kitchen Garden in Tisbury,   South Wiltshire.

The idea coming from the Head Chef at the restaurant there was to produce a small series of linocuts about this very special place through the seasons of the year. 

Pythouse is one of those classic 18th century walled gardens - three acres of South West facing and slightly sloping. Around the soft brick walls are cordoned pears, a wall divided the bottom section and an orchard, and then another natural boundary before the beehives amongst tall trees and wild garlic.

Form the top of the garden you can see across the landscape and the timeless view encompasses that protected feeling a walled garden has, but also embraces the wonderful skies as weather rolls over the hills and of course the sunsets.

Sowing at Pythouse

There is an aspect of formality in terms of hedged portions of the garden but at Pythouse they have replaces the traditional box or topiary hedges with rows of the gelder rose which also forms the source of pounds of rose hips in season.  

 There is a very fine  but informal restaurant attached to the garden and although there is no attempt to be self suffiicient as such, much of the produce in the garden is used to create small batch chutneys, jams and sauces - which you can buy! It is also the home of Sprigster drinks. So much of what is grown is small batch production rather than acres of carrots or brassicas. There are rows of herbs, lots of soft fruit, a glorious patch of rhubarb and a couple of glass houses for early salads and micro greens.  Around the garden are old fashioned labels emphasising the sense of history and also of course that essential variety within the same vegetable of fruit type.  Everything is used and made part of the  ethical and sustainable  menus  - the seasons are celebrated and there are also areas where ‘on the fire’  and outdoor cooking and dining takes place. It is one of those special places where  the thought and care and love is evident all around you.

 I was there just at the turn of Spring… when you can relish in the new greens  and the garden coming to life again. However it was a cool Spring and they had delayed their evening opening which meant that the staff left at the end of the day - and I was left alone cosy in a shepherd hut ..and the garden was ‘mine’ for a few hours.  

Harvest

On every lovely part of the garden is the picking garden … visitors are given buckets and invited to leave the garden with hand picked bunches. It was a little early for much of that patch to be blooming but diners were going home with armfuls of daffodils that were lining the pathways between the hedges.

 I’m not alone in dreaming of having a walled garden and have always fantasied as I visit National Trust Kitchen gardens and the like. The combination of beauty and practicality  - the thrill of producing your own food and making the fruit, herbs and vegetables play a structural role to the layout and design of the space is to me a perfect combination… a romantic, fanciful but simple notion-  but  I have often thought ‘I could very happily live in a kitchen garden’.. and for a few days I did ! I made drawings, took photographs  and was given beautiful crafted meals and when I got back home I made a series of 4 linocuts based on the seasons and key elements of the life of such place.

Pruning

 These linocut prints are each made with two blocks. I use traditional brown flooring lino and print on a two hundred year old Albion press at my home in the centre of Leicester.  I live in an Victorian Coach house, work from home and my small city (red brick) walled garden ais full to bursting with plants and a very small greenhouse - it nevertheless offers me a green space to potter and pause and breathe in plants .  I also have an allotment which provides much inspiration and solace as well as a community of like minded growers.

Sarah Kirby

June 2024