How about pheasant with caramelised apple and cider sauce! Ingredients (to serve 2-4) Method Pheasant and cider sauce Caramelised apples Once the sauce mixture is reduced, pour over and serve! Top tip This is a lovely, tasty wintery dish using well hung pheasant but if you’re not the gamey type, it works equally well… Continue reading Cooking with Cider this Christmas?
Author: Ashridge Support
Foraged Blackberry & Apple Crumble
Do you have a freezer full of blackberries? If not, then ignore the blackberry & enjoy your apple crumble! This time of year, mid-November, is hefty with apples. Down here in sunny Somerset, the late blackberries are only recently all gone from the bushes. If you have helpful kids around, chances are you have bags… Continue reading Foraged Blackberry & Apple Crumble
Rose Hips are Pretty & Good to Eat
Rose hips are mostly an ornamental second display from Autumn into Winter, but all rose hips are edible if you want to go through the trouble of preparing them And almost all roses will make hips if they get pollinated and you allow them to develop, which is not usually the case with a typical… Continue reading Rose Hips are Pretty & Good to Eat
Ash Tree Dieback Disease Hits Somerset
It Doesn’t Seem Real Until it Happens to You Yes, folks, it finally happened to us. We had a good run, but the dieback got us, right in the Bridgwater Road, which will be closed for five days this October to take down infected Ash trees. Ash saplings infected by the Chalara fraxinea fungus were… Continue reading Ash Tree Dieback Disease Hits Somerset
Killing Yew with Feet in Clay
October can be a peak month for planting and digging. You’ve got your Spring Flower Bulbs going in the ground, a flurry of pot grown plants from soft fruit to ferns (many of which are on discount in Autumn, as newsletter subscribers know), and gardeners on their ‘A game’ will work that soil in preparation… Continue reading Killing Yew with Feet in Clay
Apple Pollination Groups & Dates
October is a Good Time to Plan Orchards October is main bulb planting time. Why am I making you think about pollinating fruit trees? Pollination happens in blooming Spring over six months away, which is literally a whole year. But the bareroot tree planting season is almost ‘pon us merry fellows, starting when weather permits… Continue reading Apple Pollination Groups & Dates
Resting behind your Laurels
Cherry Laurel is a delightful name for Common Laurel, despite not getting proper cherries off it – the birds don’t complain, though. It is such a popular evergreen hedging plant in British gardens that although it’s not native, it’s known abroad as the “English Laurel”. No one understands good old Prunus laurocerasus Rotundifolia like the… Continue reading Resting behind your Laurels
Millionaire Sustainable Hedgerow Living
Cornwall Council is Leading the World in Public Edible Hedge Planting Foraging berries and fruit from hedgerows for your breakfast is back! As we like to say around here since today: no matter how good things get, there’s always more fruit on the hedge. With the help of trend setters like the Shared Prosperity Fund,… Continue reading Millionaire Sustainable Hedgerow Living
Hedgerow Jelly Recipe
Make a unique Jelly from Country Hedges & Wild Plants This recipe uses fruit commonly found in mixed hedges and wild plants (identify before eating them). Wild plums generally ripen around late summer, apples & crab apples generally ripen later, both can be found in quantity in time to mix with blackberries, and whatever else… Continue reading Hedgerow Jelly Recipe
Soft Edges in Urban Garden Design
Modern buildings and roads tend to create stark boundaries: all structure with no life Well-thought-out planting will soften these hard lines and corners, and bring them alive, like adding a great painting to an empty frame. In general, you want to employ a lot of evergreen shrubs and climbers that cover things up all year-round.… Continue reading Soft Edges in Urban Garden Design