Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Victorian Kitchen Garden

(Update: Amazon.co.uk now has free shipping to Spain on things like DVDs and books- they very kindly sent me an email notice the other day--C.)



I bought myself the 3 CD boxed set from amazon.co.uk and I´m completely beguiled. Watched ´em all in about 2 days.

A little background:

The Victorian Kitchen Garden was a 13-part television series produced in 1987 for BBC Two (Must see. Mike). It recreated a kitchen garden of the Victorian era at Chilton Foliat in Wiltshire. The presenter was the horticultural lecturer, Peter Thoday, the master gardener was Harry Dodson.

(EDIT)

The series began in the largely derelict walled garden at Chilton on a freezing January morning and followed Harry and his assistant Alison as they recreated the working kitchen garden.


You can watch the first 10 minutes of each episode HERE.

Aren´t walled gardens lovely?



Boy do I want one of these.




Have now moved on to Geoff Hamilton´s Garden set. I must be masochistic to be watching all this at this time of year.

But somewhere mid-November we should be closing on the ruin. So I foresee trips to the tool store and much clearing away of bracken and vine. And I have tulips (from a layover in Amsterdam) to plant in some out of the way corner.

5 comments:

  1. We missed that series as we depend on downloads from UK Nova, however we did get to see the Victorian Farm done by the same team, we were so impressed that we bought the book from Amazon, you can borrow it sometime if you would like to. We also saw the Victorian Pharmacy which although interesting was less relevant.

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  2. PS, just watched the clip, don't think it's the same team, don't know how we missed it as we were still in Ireland when it was on TV.

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  3. Geoff Hamilton is much more detailed about what things are called and how to plant/propogate them - but the Victorian series was so utterly charming I highly recommend it. I´m thinking about sending the set to my Mom for Christmas. And did I mention the kitchen in The Victorian Kitchen? Oh, for a copper pot collection.

    I looked at the Victorian Farm set, but decided to spring for the River Cottage Series instead. Expect further reviews.

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  4. River Cottage is great, this last series, we think is the best, we are lucky enough to get it on our download site, then we burn it to disk. PS. It's a legal site!

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  5. Sadly the garden in these DVDs is no more. We have been running blogs on abandoned gardens, we are big fans of these DVDs and it seems such a waste that they are now, again, derelict. Even worse then they were before the 1987 TV series. Hope you don't mind me sharing the link, it may be of interest to you and your readers. Great blog http://lifeonpigrow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-victorian-kitchen-garden-truth.html

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