About this campaign
With your help, we have successfully raised £12,000 to keep the historic Walled Garden in Dartington’s grade 2* listed gardens in use as a productive food growing area and educational space, providing a local food source for businesses on the estate.
This project puts into practice Dartington’s commitment to locally grown seasonal food. Although production is on a small scale, this kitchen garden offers a range of advantages, including:
Bringing a historic hidden gem on the estate back into meaningful use, in keeping with the plans laid out by Dan Pearson’s in his vision for the gardens
Providing a zero food miles source of produce for restaurants and cafes on the estate, supporting Dartington’s ambition to give customers the opportunity to eat food with a known provenance
Helping to engage and educate staff and visitors to the estate in the importance of seasonal locally sourced produce
Creating a vibrant place to visit when you are on the estate. Come and say hello!
Working together with a professional gardener and a team of local volunteers to grow healthy and nutritious food all year round
Our target
Our aim is to develop the Walled Garden to be self-sustaining over the next year with all sales of produce being ploughed back into the project. Your donations ensured that the garden can be properly established so that it can thrive long into the future.
This investment will ensure that the work is fully funded for the next year, and will give the team vital time to work towards the future economic sustainability of the garden. All work will add to the community spirit that helped this project come to life.
The story so far
Last year an experienced gardener, Sarah Coates, worked with volunteers to rejuvenate the previously neglected Walled Garden and get it up and running once more as a productive garden.
The work has been transformative, bringing this unused space back to life with a colourful array of garden-grown vegetables, seasonal herbs and edible flowers, introducing a kaleidoscope of colours, scents and flavours. For the first time, our restaurants now feature some dishes with almost zero food miles, and food wastage and packaging from walled garden supplied veg is almost non-existent.
“At the Green Table, it is so important to us that we source as much food as possible from local suppliers and producers. The Walled Garden project is fantastic as it offers us a new food source right on our doorstep, and it has such a lovely link with the heritage of the Dartington estate.”
– TARA, THE GREEN TABLE CAFÉ