The Prodigal Daughter’s Potager Garden
Back on tour is the impressive potager garden of international chef Rachel Priestley. Her garden combines her love of cooking with culinary cultivation of her piece of paradise
9a Cologne Street
Martinborough
Rachel bought this property with a vision in mind. After clearing overgrown mature trees fighting for space and designing garden rooms to remind her of her extensive travels, she introduced French and Italian herbs and vegetables to intermingle with fruit trees and flowers.
The front garden is filled with herbs, aromatics, and dwarf fruit trees, the small space retaining existing plantings now brought back into line. A common theme you will find is artichokes planted wherever there is space. This speaks to the scattered artichoke plants Rachel remembers growing in her large childhood garden, with their silver minty foliage adding complementary aesthetics to their edible value. The spaces have matured so much since our 2022 tour, particularly the kaka beaks, espaliered fruit trees and huge towering lilies….
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The garden and the kitchen go both ways. Rachel loves always having something to pick and eat in her garden, and also loves giving back to the garden from the kitchen: coffee grounds get fed to the citrus, banana skins get turned into a natural liquid potassium compost to feed to flowering and fruiting plants, rhubarb leaves are boiled to create a liquid spray for citrus bugs, and always thinking food she nourishes her plants with a natural yeast fertiliser using fresh yeast from the kitchen and adding it to collected rainwater.
You’ll see lots of companion planting, including natural insect deterrents such as marigold and basil with tomatoes. Moon planting principles are also employed in this multi-faceted edible garden.
Pop on in (pun intended) and have a glass of bubbles or her own sparkling lemonade and sample some of the Prodigal Daughter’s delicious food. Rachel will be sharing her love of sustainable stainless steel with high quality catering equipment for sale such as Tomkin cake stands, dough cutters, long tongs, oven trays, and her very own preserves and infused olive oils so bring cash for this garden.
Amongst other delicious delights she will be making her garden-herb arancini again, smoked-salmon baguettes, rosemary focaccia with vegetable crudités and hummus, chocolate orange mousse and Shane’s famous tiramisu he learnt to make in Italy!
GALLERY
