The ladies had brought in the pincushion cupcakes that they made at our recent Craft Club evening - they are absolutely beautiful!
Keith Hugill then gave us a wonderful look behind the scenes of Preston Park Museum's Victorian Walled Garden, which he has recently been restoring to it's original former glory. It is amazing the lengths that they have gone to in order to make sure that it is exactly as it would have been in it's heyday - and this gentleman certainly seems to know his plants! I'd never heard of most of the heritage plants that they have planted there - things like spherical courgettes and electric daisies! They plant the heritage varieties alongside modern varieties so that visitors can taste both items and judge for themselves which is the better (invariably it is the heritage).
He explained how the Head Gardener would have organised his garden, and how young boys would start washing the plant pots and work their way up the ranks to be a gardener themselves. The ultimate prestige in Victorian times was to be able to grow items out of season - especially things like melons and pineapples in the winter season - hence the reason why a pineapple would be the ultimate centrepiece decoration for the Christmas Dinner table. Local women would be employed at the cost of 2p a day to weed the gardens, as the this released the gardener for more specialised tasks, and created extra work for the surrounding areas.
The Victorian walled garden would be ideally suited as far from the house as possible to prevent the smells (manure) from invading the house. Keith explained that the more prosperous the home owner was, the further away the kitchen garden would be situated (up to 2 miles) - not only would he have more land in order to move it away, but he would also have the means to employ someone to transport the items from the garden to the house.
Electric Daisies are plants that numb the mouth and give something of an electric shock to it. He said that it is amusing to watch people eat this and then try to talk as it is impossible to do so. When he described the taste as "stardust with a bit of crack added" - the looks on the assembled ladies faces was PRICELESS!!!!
However, the produce that Victorians most lusted after was rhubarb. They couldn't get enough of it. He explained how the rhubarb would be grown and harvested in the Rhubarb Triangle on the morning and then put onto the Rhubarb Express (it's true - I'm not making it up) to arrive in London and be on the market stalls for the afternoon. There were literally hundreds of varieties of this humble plant.
After his very entertaining presentation it was time to judge the competition: A Gardening Tip....
As ever, a very pleasant evening was had by all.
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