A tour around the gardens at Fircroft.

Well you might have seen me mention my new job in several posts that I have made over the last couple of months. Anyway today I would like to formally introduce you to Fircroft College of Adult Education. I am currently working in the marketing department here and I am having a great time to say the least. Fircroft is set in the house and ground of the Cadbury Empire's former family home. Featuring the historic main building and 6 acres of beautiful gardens, it is a lovely environment to work in.

Today I have been on a walk around the gardens to bring you a small tour of the gardens here. Obviously we are coming to a bit of a halt in this year's growing season, so at the end I'll share some pictures of what the place looks like in the spring and summer seasons too.

From my perspective, the most interesting thing about the grounds at Fircroft is the kitchen garden and polytunnel. Seeing delicious veg being grown here all year round and then having the privilidge of eating it in the dining room is a pleasure. The majority of food at Fircroft is home-made and a lot of the vegetable's are home grown too. Today we have had runner beans in honey (sounds odd, but was delicious) and home grown sweetcorn to accompany our roast chicken.

Let's start at the orchard. There are a good mix of established apple and pear trees along with about 10 new trees which were planted alst year....

 here is the kitchen garden...

This is where all of the delicious vegetables we eat in the canteen come from....

Here's the polytunnel....

Only the other day it was full of tomatoes, but now it's just peppers and chillis left....

Here's a vegetable I don't want to see and if you've read some of our previous posts then you'll know why.......

Like all plots there is a lot of bare earth. Potatoes and onions are up and out of the ground. These patches will get a chance to breathe and with some manure or compost will be ready to go again in 2013..

A path from the kitchen garden leads you to a large lawned area...

On the way we bypass this little sign...

That oak tree is now over 50ft tall!!

Back on the path behind the kitchen garden, where will we go now?

Plenty of woodland..

Now the pond....

Needs a little tlc but is a nice feature none the less...

I spotted plenty of dragonflies around the pond. There was plenty of other wildlife I saw on this little tour including some birds of prey which I think were buzzards, there were also squirells, magpies, a robin, bees, and lots more too!

Looking back at the historic main building which as I have said used to be the Cadbury family home...

In the foreground is a small rose garden....

After all that I even bought myself a present back to the office from the woodland floor....

Alongside courses for adult learners including literacy and numeracy we also host courses for professionals in the voluntary sector, but if that isn't your cup of tea and you've stumbled across my blog whilst looking for gardening start up advice then we also run gardening courses in the summer. It would mean a lot if you took one moment to have a look at our website and see some of the really important work that we do. There should be more details of the gardening courses and their dates on the website too, and maybe some more pictures. www.fircroft.ac.uk

Well, I hope you have enjoyed today's mini tour. I'll try and do at least a monthly update from within the college and let you see what we are up to in the gardens. One of my ambitions that I have is to open up the gardens for the general public next summer, so I'll keep you posted on any developments as and when they happen.

Before I finish here are a couple more pictures of Fircroft at more favourable times of year and also taken with a good camera as opposed to an iPhone!

Also, you may notice that there is a bit of maintenance going on behind the scenes here at www.our-good-life.blogspot.com , so don't be alarmed if when you next come back some bits have changed or are missing, we are actually updating a few things here and there to bring the live facebook stream to you. I also have a lot of emails throughout the year about growing, gardening, chickens, quail, you name it, so I have decided to add a couple of pages with some FAQs and 'How To Guides'! We hope you'll like them and will let you know when they are ready.

Thanks once again for reading this blog! Your continued comments, emails etc. they mean the world to us and it is always nice to know that people enjoy reading about us and what we are passionate about.

We'll be back tomorrow with an update from tonight's shift at the allotment!

Martin