Our Kitchen Garden

Our kitchen garden really influences our menu, with a big focus on herbs, fruits & salad produce.

Since Tanya & Alex have been at The Polgooth Inn there have always been some sort of vegetables/ herbs/ fruit growing in one way or another, but very much on a small scale. Then in 2015 Sam Cornfield - AKA The Hairy Horticulturalist arrived and catapulted them into ‘next level’ growing. The growing & maintenance of the gardens & grounds and now down to Kev & Jamie the Chef.

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In 2016, shin-deep in mud, Sam started on a new vegetable garden. It would be in full view of the pub garden, complete with gravel paths and raised beds. He didn’t particularly grow anything at first; just looked at what was growing and made a plan for winter.

 We grow some fairly standard vegetables (with a twist) and some not so standard ones. The years has seen potatoes that have purple and red flesh, rainbow carrots, Cucamelons, round cucumbers, purple beans, multi coloured corn to name but a few.

The one thing Sam was rather proud of (apart from his beard) is managing to grow nearly all the cucumbers used in the kitchen over this summer of 2017. It’s a lot, nearly 2000 straight and bendy ones, all grown on site with zero food miles and plenty of flavour. It wasn’t easy but it proves that you don’t have to buy them in!

He tried to not grow anything normal but what is normal? Normal is boring! Normal is commercially developed varieties that we all buy from the supermarket! Why grow red tomatoes when you can have heritage, colourful and flavoursome varieties? Or green mange tout when you can have super sweet yellow or earthy purple varieties?

Since the new garden was built we’ve expanded even further. We currently have two polytunnels and a new field for larger crop quantities. We have a new, more organised herb garden that the chefs can access straight from the kitchen as well as an orchard. We even boast four of our own Bee Hives.

Over the years, most restaurants and pubs with large kitchen gardens were high end, Michelin-starred/ celebrity chef owned establishments but this is slowly changing. 

Over the past 12 years the kitchen garden at The Polgooth Inn has expanded perfectly as we test different crops, their financial viability and how they fit onto the menu. 

If we can provide healthy, fresh and unusual crops on site and help educate adults, children and other businesses to give it a try, then that’s not too shabby.