ALAN POWER: Thanks for downloading this garden cutting

from the National Trust in these shorter programmes. I'm

exploring a particular aspect of our work.

I'm Alan Power, the head gardener at Stourhead in

Wiltshire for the National Trust. But today I'm at

Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent, which surprisingly sits on

clay soil, which is a big challenge for gardeners.

There's a wonderful Veg Garden here, which wasn't part of the

original design at Sissinghurst, but with some clever gardeners

and clever gardening, they're now able to have one.

I'm standing here with Helen Musgrave and Chris Robinson who

are the brains behind the operation in the Veg Garden.

That's true to say, isn't it?

HELEN MUSGRAVE: Yeah, you could say that. So, we're a team of

two members of staff.

And about 26 volunteers who come for a morning a week and help us

out on the day to day running of the Veg Garden.

ALAN POWER: And as I walked up here from the garden below which

we kind of elevated above in this position, I walked past the

restaurant and there was some nice smells coming out of the

restaurant. Is that your food?

HELEN MUSGRAVE: Yes, some of that will be our food. So, one

of the main aims of the Veg Garden when it was set up was to

provide fresh local food to the restaurant and that's what we

do.

So last year we grew, 4.5 tons worth of produce here on our

four acre site and most of that went to the restaurant. But some

of that we also sell in our plant shop for visitors to take

home with them.

ALAN POWER: 4.5 tons?

HELEN MUSGRAVE: That's Right

ALAN POWER: 4.5 tons. I have to say that again to try and

picture 4.5 tons of food. That's amazing, isn't it?

HELEN MUSGRAVE: Yeah, it's really exciting. And we're on

target to make just a little bit more than that year. So we're

really excited.

ALAN POWER: I'm aware that you're on clay soil. It can be

quite tricky, can't it?

HELEN MUSGRAVE: Yes. So clay soil has quite specific

characteristics and that it's quite a dense soil and it can

become quite waterlogged. So in the winter you can get quite wet

soil, but in the summer it will bake hard a bit like concrete.

ALAN POWER: Your boots become 10 tons heavier by the end of the

day, working on this soil. But I know that you've employed a no

dig kind of policy on how you manage your veg here. And I've

heard of this and read about it, but I've never, I've never

actually employed it and I'm quite keen to because it sounds

great.

HELEN MUSGRAVE: It is great. We've been doing no dig

gardening for four years now here at Sissinghurst. And I

guess the main principles of it are you have these narrow beds

which you never walk on. And that means you're not compacting

the soil and then every year, usually over the winter. So

we've started now, as you can see, lots of our beds have got

lovely dark compost on them.

We just add a layer of mulch or compost to the top of the beds

and don't dig it in and we let the worms and micro organisms

take it in for us.

ALAN POWER: So this dark, rich, lovely looking mulch that's on

the beds. Where, where do you get that from?

HELEN MUSGRAVE: So we buy this from a company who buys from the

council all the bits and pieces that go into your wheelie bin at

home. So it's your green waste that you've, you know, chopped

up a tree in your garden or, got some nasty weeds that you don't

particularly like. They take it away. They turn it into compost

at high temperatures. So it gets rid of all the weed seeds that

are in it and they sell it back to us.

ALAN POWER: Because that's really important, isn't it?

Because sometimes you see, you see mulch and compost coming in

and then you'll almost have a wild flower meadow developing

the next year. A wild flower meadow that you don't want in

your Veg Garden!

HELEN MUSGRAVE: Yeah, that's right. I think the key is

keeping it- getting up to that high temperature and then that

just kills off any seeds that are in there.

ALAN POWER: And obviously with the clay soil, you, you must

have to put tons of organic matter on for the worms to come

in.

HELEN MUSGRAVE: And, yeah, so we probably layer about a couple of

inches of compost onto the top beds. But clay soil is great

because it holds nutrients.

So quite often it's quite high in nutrients anyway. So we're

not adding loads of manures, which will have lots of

nutrients to add into the soils. It's almost as if we're just

adding a soil conditioner to break down the soils a little

bit and have a better structure.

ALAN POWER: And Chris, you, you volunteered here for five years

now?

CHRIS ROBINSON: Five years.

ALAN POWER: You've employed no dig at home as well, have you?

CHRIS ROBINSON: I have because I'm on clay as well.

And the no dig gives you the opportunity to work the ground

all year. So with the mulching and not walking on the soil, you

can plant into just the surface.

ALAN POWER: And how narrow are your beds at home?

CHRIS ROBINSON: 4 ft wide

So we can work from either side. No digging would be nothing

without the mulch at home. Don't be afraid to put a good mulch on

top and then just leave it. Don't try and dig it in.

ALAN POWER: And the worms will do all the?

CHRIS ROBINSON: And the worms will do all the digging for you.

ALAN POWER: So you can sit back and have a cup of tea and watch

it happen.

Tell me we're standing here, chilly December Day. Can you

roughly run me through what you've got in the garden at the

moment?

HELEN MUSGRAVE: Lots of lovely winter vegetables. So we've got

leeks, cabbages, Brussels Sprouts have just started to be

ready.

Lots of different types of Kale. We've got early purple

sprouting, which is in which will be harvesting next year And

we're really lucky as well as Sissinghurst because we've got

two polytunnels and these just provide a really nice

environment, a bit of a warmer environment so we can grow crops

and throughout the year.

So we grow all our salad crops in there through the winter so

we can get some really nice spicy different salad mixes out

into the restaurant even when it's snowing outside.

ALAN POWER: That's brilliant. Thank you both very much.

CHRIS ROBINSON: Thank you.

ALAN POWER: Thanks for downloading this garden cutting

from the National Trust. If you've enjoyed this podcast, you

can find more of them by searching National Trust

Gardens, subscribe on itunes or follow us on your favorite

podcast app.

We'd love to know what you think of the series to help us make

more of them in the future. So please do leave us a review on

itunes as well as filling out our survey which you find in the

program description and I hope you can join me again soon.

BETTANY HUGHES: I'm Bettany Hughes. I've been visiting

National Trust properties all my life.

But in this series of podcasts, I'm going beyond the delights of

tees and topiary to reveal the surprising European roots of

some of the most splendid sites in England.

You can subscribe to my series by searching for Bettany

Hughes's 10 places, Europe and us on your podcast app.