The West Garden at Harewood

During the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, the horticulture industry, alongside agriculture and many others, will be presenting its sustainability targets and demonstrating the progress being made towards net zero. Sustainable food production, urban tree planting, reduction in the use of peat, investment in renewable energy, increasing circularity in horticultural plastics and the responsible management of water resources are among many environmental issues affecting the horticulture industry that will be discussed at the climate change summit.

The role of Gardens

Gardens are vital to our health and wellbeing, as well as to the health of the planet. They provide space for relaxation, exercise and play, as well as for the growing of beautiful plants and nutritious food. Crucially, gardens also serve as valuable havens for wildlife and so are environmentally and ecologically important. It is estimated that UK gardens cover a total area of over 430,000 hectares – more than four times the total area of our National Nature Reserves*. And with the number of gardening enthusiasts in Britain now at 30 million*, there is a huge potential for gardeners to collectively play a major role in mitigating the impact of climate change. This can be done in many ways by adapting our gardening methods to reduce our carbon footprint, planting more trees and shrubs, and creating more wildlife habitats in our gardens to support biodiversity.

How are the gardens at Harewood contributing to the climate change emergency?

Soil

Crops being grown by the ‘no-dig’ method in the Harewood Walled Garden

Soil stores carbon captured from the atmosphere through plant photosynthesis. Soils generally contain about three times more carbon than the atmosphere. When soil is dug over, this carbon is released back into the atmosphere. The action of digging over the soil also destroys the intricate networks of beneficial fungi, microbes and organisms living in the soil. This symbiotic ecosystem of soil-borne organisms is known as the ‘soil food web’ and is vital to plant health, as well as to the health of the planet.

At Harewood, we use ‘no-dig’ methods to grow food crops in the kitchen garden. Instead of digging the soil over and releasing the carbon into the atmosphere, we apply composted organic matter to the surface and allow the soil food web to break it down naturally, thereby locking in the carbon whilst protecting the ecology of the soil and feeding our crops in the process.

Peat

Huge piles of leaves collected from the grounds at Harewood being converted into our peat-free compost and mulch

Peatland habitats as blanket bogs, raised bogs and fens cover around 10% of the UK total land area.* Peatlands have formed over many thousands of years, they are essential terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and support a unique biodiversity. Undisturbed peatlands also store huge amounts of carbon below ground, but the carbon is released into the atmosphere and habitats are lost when peatlands are damaged or disturbed through activities such as drainage, peat extraction, agriculture etc.

We don’t buy peat composts or use any peat in our gardens at Harewood. Instead, we produce our own composts and mulches. This is done on site through the recycling of a wide range of green waste materials, including garden clippings, prunings and especially from the many tonnes of fallen leaves, which we collect from all around the gardens and parkland every autumn. We are also looking carefully at the sustainability of our supply chains to ensure that the plants and products we purchase in the future are peat-free.

Biodiversity

Harewood’s flower-rich gardens are beneficial to vast numbers of insect pollinators

Biodiversity loss through habitat destruction is a primary concern today and one which will be addressed during COP26.

As well as caring for the ‘world beneath our feet’ by protecting a myriad of soil-borne organisms through our ‘no-dig’ system, we work diligently to protect and enhance biodiversity throughout the gardens. Harewood contains a diverse range of habitats for an abundance of wildlife. Birds, fish and mammals, including bats, hedgehogs and otters live in the lakes, ponds, rivers, woodlands, grasslands and hedgerows, as well as the many old buildings, walls, ditches and even compost heaps and log piles. Our gardening practices support the stable food chains required to sustain this biodiversity. Vast numbers of bees, hoverflies, butterflies and moths visit the garden attracted by our amazingly rich flower borders, meadows and planting schemes. These provide a wealth of nectar pools and benefit huge numbers of pollinating insects. We create habitat piles for beetles and other woodland insects and adjust our mowing regimes according to the seasons so as to protect frogs, newts and toads emerging from the lake and migrating into the lakeside woodlands.

Trees

A gigantic veteran beech tree in the Lakeside woodlands at Harewood

Trees and woodlands are immensely valuable to us in the fight against climate change caused by increasing levels of atmospheric CO₂ and rising global temperatures. Many experts agree that trees are ‘our most powerful weapon against the devastating consequences of climate change and offer our simplest solution to helping avert the irreversible collapse of ecosystems’*. Global deforestation is a huge concern as habitats are destroyed and the planet’s ecosystems are put at risk. Alongside drastically reducing our CO₂ emissions, we simply must plant millions of trees to restore habitats and create the climate-cooling woodlands and urban greenspaces of the future.

Trees are champions of carbon capture. They absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and can lock it up below ground for many years, even centuries. Native broadleaf woodlands play a vital role in locking up hundreds of tonnes of atmospheric carbon per hectare.

Protecting ancient trees and established woodland ecosystems is essential. At Harewood, we plant trees for landscape continuity and conservation, as well as grow young trees from seed in our tree nursery. A large part of our work in the park and gardens is the monitoring and protection of veteran and ancient trees. Not only are these old trees carbon sinks, they are also unique ecosystems and therefore important habitats for wildlife. We responsibly manage and maintain a large number of mature trees at Harewood, thereby preserving our parkland trees and the habitats they support for future generations.

Water

Drought-tolerant, perennial lavenders have replaced annual bedding displays at Harewood

Water supplies for public use are under pressure across the UK. It is reported that we need to reduce our demand and cut down on wastage to avoid many areas facing water deficits in the future. The amount of water available for households, industry and farming etc is limited and there is little capacity to meet increases in demand. Such pressures can affect the availability of water to a range of important habitats, such as bogs, fens and marshes, and place them under threat. Water resources will continue to be affected by population growth and climate change, so it is important that we keep the use of drinking water for the garden to a minimum and look to collecting rainwater wherever possible.

Here at Harewood, we have considerably reduced our consumption of water in the gardens. The irrigation system on the Terrace, which was installed in 1993 as part of the restoration project, has now been permanently decommissioned. The twice-annual planting of spring and summer bedding plants has been scrapped in favour of more drought-tolerant perennials, such as lavender. In the kitchen garden, we selectively spot-water our crops and keep this to an absolute minimum through the use of mulches: either compost, wool matting or cardboard. Mulching suppresses competing weeds and prevents the evaporation of soil moisture. We also have a rainwater barrel for collecting rainwater from the glasshouse roof and use watering cans fitted with a fine rose held low over seed drills to avoid wastage.

By using the ‘no-dig’ method, we also avoid soil erosion in the kitchen garden. When the soil is dug over and broken up, subsequent rainfall washes loose particles of soil, along with fertilisers, into land drains and eventually into water courses, where it forms as silt deposits. This ultimately affects the condition of the downstream freshwater environment. By adopting the ‘no-dig’ method and keeping watering to a minimum, soil erosion and siltation are considerably reduced.

Plastics

Plastic pots are continuously washed and re-used for plant propagation at Harewood

We all know how useful plastic is in the garden, but it is also widely known that plastic and the processes by which it is made are not good for the environment. Some plastics can take hundreds of years to break down and some can contaminate soil and water as they degrade, causing harm to wildlife.

The decision to plant drought-tolerant perennials at Harewood, such as lavender, as a change to buying in thousands of bulbs and bedding plants each year, was made entirely for environmental reasons. Drought-tolerant perennials not only save water, they reduce soil disturbance caused by regular changeover lifting and planting. This helps the ‘soil food web’ to establish and also prevents soil erosion. And as well as reducing our carbon emissions from vehicle transport, the thousands of lavender plants provide a benefit to insect pollinators and support biodiversity. But one of the main reasons for the change, however, was our desire to seriously reduce the amounts of plastic trays and pots coming into the garden. We also wash and re-use our plant pots and trays for growing a wide range of plants and vegetables from seed and cuttings at Harewood.

Fossil Fuels

Zero-emission robotic mowers powered by renewable energy being trialled in the grounds at Harewood

It is widely known that diesel and petrol-powered engines produce CO₂ emissions, which pollutes the atmosphere. In the garden, this includes lawnmowers, strimmers and hedgecutters. In large parks and gardens like Harewood, covering hundreds of acres, this range extends to include large and small tractors, ATVs (all-terrain vehicles) and chainsaws etc.

As well as investing in electric ATVs to facilitate the efficient transportation of staff and goods around the gardens, we are phasing out our petrol-powered hand-held equipment, such as hedgecutters and leaf-blowers and moving over to electric, battery-powered alternatives. This is expensive to do all at once so phasing is important, but the results so far are impressive. Not only are these machines re-charged using renewable energy produced at the Harewood Estate’s biomass energy centre, making them even more eco-friendly, they are safer for the staff to use at close quarters because they produce no toxic emissions. The acquisition of a battery-powered lawnmower for small areas this summer proved to be well worth the investment. We also invested in a battery-powered chainsaw, which offers our grounds team excellent performance without toxic emissions and no risk of spills or contamination from handling petrol. We recently had two models of robotic mowers on trial at Harewood and are looking at having further trials for cutting the larger areas. This could provide an environmentally-friendly alternative to using diesel tractors and gang mowers to cut the parkland areas and also remove the risks of soil compaction around the roots of our veteran trees.

Food

Organically-grown vegetables intermixed with flowers in the Harewood Walled Garden

Harewood offers people the opportunity to visit a place of great beauty and to engage in creative and thoughtful activities, which provoke new perspectives on art, nature and life. Health and wellbeing, the environment, sustainability and biodiversity is at the heart of what we do here in the park and gardens, and food plays an extremely important part in the overall experience of Harewood today. The food journey doesn’t begin at the table, but in the Walled Garden where it is grown using organic methods and with considerable concern for the environment and the impact on climate change. The soil is carefully nurtured using ‘no-dig’ methods to protect the soil food web, lock in carbon, save water and prevent siltation. We grow fresh, nutritious vegetables, fruit and herbs without the use of pesticides and intersperse our plots with nectar-rich flowers for bees and other pollinating insects.

Produce is harvested fresh and transported half a mile by electric vehicle to the Courtyard restaurant. The chefs take all that we can produce from the Walled Garden and also creatively use a range of farm products and foraged food from the Harewood Estate, thereby seriously reducing the food miles of their overall stock. The vegetables, fruit and herbs from the garden are delivered without any packaging and all stackable crates are washed and re-used. Any damaged or surplus fruit or vegetables from the garden are sent to the Bird Garden for feeding the birds and animals, and all trimmings are composted and returned to the garden as mulch, thereby creating a zero-waste system.

-Trevor Nicholson, Head Gardener

*Sources 

http://www.wlgf.org/garden_resource.html

https://www.rhs.org.uk/garden-inspiration/get-gardening/2021-gardening-predictions

https://www.iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org/about-peatlands/uk-peatlands

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/how-trees-fight-climate-change/

“…volunteering has really made a massive difference to my life…”

Sam has volunteered in the gardens at Harewood for six years. “I wanted to share my story as volunteering has really made a massive difference to my life, I am more confident and feel part of a family at Harewood.”. Twelve years ago Sam suffered a head injury which left him with long term mental and physical health problems. Sam listened to a Monty Don Audiobook which discusses the healing power of gardens and gardening. Often in pain as a result of his injury, these words are really meaningful to Sam. Working in the fresh air, surrounded by stunning scenery and nature, Sam can be himself.

He also takes great pleasure in interacting with the visitors, sharing stories of the work he is involved with. Hearing visitors say how much they love visiting the Walled Garden makes his day and motivates Sam to continue to play his part in supporting the Grounds and Garden Staff and Volunteer Team.

This year Sam and his fellow volunteers have been working in the Walled Garden on the “no dig project”. Initially creating pathways and raising beds, then covering them with carboard or biodegradable carpet underlay, to minimise digging, suppress weeds and retain moisture.

Sam is a keen photographer and maintains a weekly photo diary to help him recall the work he does. His diary now runs to 1100 pages!

Since March 2020, our friends the Harewood Food and Drink Project have been running the Courtyard and Terrace Cafés, serving up delicious seasonal and local food. Food is synonymous with Harewood House, a place where a fully working Walled Garden has provided fresh produce to the local community and further afield for hundreds of years, including during two wartimes. In this first blog of a new series, Director Eddy Lascelles takes us through the ethos of HFDP, their work at Harewood House and what you can expect from future blogs from Eddy, Executive Chef Josh Whitehead, and other members of the HFDP team – look out for highlights of the season, foodie facts, cooking tips, recipes and more. 

Harewood’s Highland Cattle and Cyril the pig. Photo by Claire McClean

Harewood Food and Drink Project at Harewood House

Harewood Food and Drink Project works closely with Harewood House Trust’s Head Gardener, Trevor Nicholson, and his Walled Garden team, ensuring that we use as much of what’s grown on site as possible. By working closely together, we create circular economies where possible, ensuring that we’re minimising the environmental impact of what you eat when you’re on site. For example, composting raw food waste and repurposing other waste items to enrich the health of the soil, improve Harewood’s habitat and create better growing conditions.  Working with Trevor and his team is one of the great joys of our job. His knowledge and passion can’t help but inspire you. Knowing the thought, skill and work that goes in to growing our fruit and vegetables, is the greatest motivation our team of chefs could have to make sure we do these beautiful products justice when they reach your plates.

The Harewood Walled Garden

It is our commitment to use produce sourced from Harewood wherever possible, this means fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices from the Walled Garden, meat from Harewood’s livestock, wild foods that are foraged on the Estate, and wild game as well. What we can’t source internally, we work with select local independent artisan suppliers who share our ethos on how food & drink should be done.

We took over the running of the Courtyard Café and Terrace Tearoom on behalf of Harewood House Trust in March this year and we base our approach around ‘the Five S’s’, which underpin our approach to food and what you can expect during your visit to Harewood House:

• Simple
• Seasonal
• Sustainable
• Sourced Locally
• Specials

One of our seasonal Walled Garden Soups of the day. Photo by Claire McClean.

Seasonal Eating & Preservation

In a time when people have a heightened awareness of the impact of what we eat, how it is produced and how it is transported, we’re on a mission to show people that great food and drink can be done with a clear conscience.

“Seasonal eating” has become a much-overused phrase in the food and drink world, so why is it so important?

By eating what is in season means you’re having it when it’s at it’s very best, it’s freshest. There are a number of benefits to this; Fresher food has greater nutritional value, it tends to support local farmers and the local economy, it’s transported less distance so has an environmental benefit, and, possibly most important of all, it tastes better.

Seasonal eating is not only about eating what’s currently in season, it’s also about preserving the seasons.

When there’s a glut of something there’s a number of traditional techniques that can be used to prolong the usable season of fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices and meats as well as altering and enhancing their flavour profiles. These include drying, curing, smoking, pickling and fermenting, and some more expert techniques such as clamping, ageing in bees wax and dry ageing.

Wild Mushrooms from Harewood. Photo by Claire McClean.

 At this time of year preservation techniques are particularly valuable when there’s not much growing in the gardens, other than the odd hardy brassica and root vegetable. In the past, the ability to store and preserve food over the fallow, cold winter months was literally a matter of life and death. It ensured supplies of food with enough nutritional value to keep you going until the more productive Spring time came around.

These techniques have become synonymous with contemporary cuisine as they can change and enhance flavour profiles and help to bring dishes together. Scandinavian and Japanese cuisine are both pioneers of these techniques, we put them in to use here at Harewood. Next time you’re able to visit the inside of the Courtyard Café, see the shelf behind the coffee machine. This is “Josh’s Fermentation Station”, and whilst it looks like the experimentation of a mad scientist, it will all taste delicious and be used on our menus throughout the year.

Photo credit Trevor Nicholson

Harewood’s Head Gardener Trevor Nicholson takes us through new processes and methods being implemented across the Gardens, as Harewood looks to the future and more sustainable ways of caring for its Gardens and Grounds. 

As autumn gives way to winter, the Grounds and Gardens teams have been very busy, ably assisted by our loyal and enthusiastic band of volunteers. For the grounds team this means the removal of a huge quantity of fallen leaves from Harewood’s verdant lawns. The collected leaf litter is a valuable source of leaf mould for the gardens.

Having made the decision a few months earlier to change the way we grow our vegetables in the Walled Garden to something approaching the ‘no-dig’ system, every leaf – in fact, every scrap of green garden waste – has become significantly more precious to us as a renewable source of organic matter to be re-purposed as a growing medium.

Although we’ve been making compost for many years, the real difference is in the way we now apply it – and why. Call it what you will: ‘no dig’, ‘no till’, ‘reduced tillage’ etc, there are numerous labels; but they all mean pretty much the same thing: put away the spade and stop turning over and chopping up the garden soil year after year!

Photo credit Trevor Nicholson

Regularly digging over and breaking up the soil impacts on the soil ecosystem by disturbing complex ‘food webs’ – interrelations between a multitude of soil organisms and mycorrhizal fungi, which live symbiotically with plants. Leaving the soil undisturbed and placing organic matter onto the surface not only prevents stored carbon from the soil being released into the atmosphere through digging, it also provides optimum conditions to enable the community of soil organisms to flourish.

The beneficial effect of these soil organisms includes increasing the fertility of the soil and improving its structure. One of the most important environmental benefits of adopting this method of surface ‘mulching’ is the retention of soil moisture, which not only saves water, but also reduces soil erosion and helps prevent the silting up of rivers and drainage systems.

Another added benefit to the gardener of applying organic matter to the soil as a surface ‘mulch’ is the control of weeds. This method need not be confined to the vegetable garden. We are experimenting in some areas of the Himalayan Garden with the use of waste cardboard re-purposed as a biodegradable ground cover, which is being placed between plants and topped off with sieved leaf mould.

The composting of our green garden waste and the recycling of biodegradable materials really underpins much of what we are doing in the gardens – now and in the future – as we set our focus on working in ever more sustainable ways and having environmentally considered methods at the forefront of our  thinking.

Maria Mahon, kitchen gardener in Harewood’s Walled Garden gives an insight into this easy to grow and long lasting crop – rhubarb.

It’s that time of year when rhubarb is starting to grow and those delicious crimson stems can be seen gradually emerging from the soil, stretching and unfurling their young green leaves as if waking up from a long winter sleep. Allotment holders and vegetable gardeners alike will be looking forward to all the scrumptious culinary ways in which to use this famous Yorkshire delicacy.

During the Victorian era and right through to the end of the 2nd World War, rhubarb became very popular as growers discovered how to achieve an early crop of deep pink, tender stems through a technique known as forcing. Forcing involves tricking the plants into thinking spring has arrived. Planting them in dark heated sheds during the winter months, the plant searches for light and as it does so, the stems become thinner and less fibrous than those grown out in the field.

Growers in Yorkshire led the way when it came to growing rhubarb, and most folk have heard of the Rhubarb Triangle (Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield). However, during the 1950s demand for rhubarb went into decline as more exotic fruits became readily available from overseas.

So, how easy is it to grow rhubarb? Very easy is the answer.

Rhubarb requires very little maintenance other than an application of a general purpose fertiliser around the crowns once the harvesting season is over and an annual dressing with well-rotted compost or manure in January or February.

It needs a sunny spot with well-drained soil and so long as it is kept well watered, will provide delicious stalks ready for harvesting every 6-8 weeks during spring and summer, depending on the variety.

The easiest way to introduce rhubarb is to plant crowns and we were very generously donated some crowns from RV Rogers nursery at Pickering. Whilst November is the ideal time to plant crowns, they can still be planted right up until early spring if the ground isn‘t frozen.

Rhubarb is a vegetable rather than a fruit and a lot of people mistakenly think that the colour of the stalk indicates its ripeness. In fact, it is quite the contrary, the more time the stalk spends growing before it is picked, the tougher and more fibrous the stalk gets as it photosynthesises, so it is good to pick the stalks regularly.

We’ve a good crop on display now in the Walled Garden and hope to see some fine samples on the Courtyard Café menu in the next week or so, any perhaps for sale in the Courtyard shop.