Something exciting happened! We were asked if the Veg garden and Orchard at Le Manoir aux quat’saisons would like to feature on Gardeners world. Well, yes, yes they would!! It was for the Mary Berry winter special. Mary Berry had specifically asked for the orchard to feature and the veg garden was to feature too.
Now, obviously we were very excited and said yes. After a bit of back and forth a plan was formed and the camera crew and Joe Swift were to arrive at the end of September 2023.
Queue, end of September 2023! The crew arrives to set up and they were to film John Driscoll (Head veg gardener) in the veg garden first. Joe Swift arrived shortly afterwards and so it began. The morning was spent filming in the veg garden and as I wasn’t involved I can’t really say a lot about that I’m afraid. Yacon, Vietnamese coriander and companion planting made the cut and its well worth the watch. After lunch was the orchards turn.
It was an incredibly hot day. We have a weather station in the orchard and it got to 32.5 degrees, add an orchard in full leaf to that and you have a very humid, stifling environment. I don’t cope with the heat at the best of times so I did think, typical! Just my luck!
This was my first time on tv and Joe and the crew were really lovely and put me at ease straight away. We focused on heritage varieties of apples and pears and we filmed the Humbug pear, Pitmaston pineapple, reinette gris du canada, Blenheim Orange, conference pear and Rosette apple. The Humbug and Rosette got the prime spots on our piece. We also filmed a piece on climate change within the orchard and fruit usage which didn’t make the cut.
It was the strangest picnic I have ever had! The food consisted of Rosette apple and spoons of brown sauce. The brown sauce is a Raymond Blanc recipe and was filmed because you can use the whole fruit, core and all!
It was quite fascinating seeing the process through and then watching the end result. The filming took 4.5 hours…in that heat! (Did I mention it was hot?!) And we did eventually seek shelter from the sun in our taste and textures section. Being filmed in the sun was difficult, you know you’re red and sweaty, you know your scrunching up your face due to the sun in your eyes and all you’re thinking is “gosh it’s hot”! We had a golf buggy at the ready with bottled water in a cool box, Le Manoirs umbrellas at the ready for shade between takes and our Head Gardener Anne Marie looking after us!
It’s been a great response from friends, family and orchardists. What a lovely way to show off this stunning orchard and a few of the stories it holds!
I believe its on iplayer for a year. The link is below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001td5c/gardeners-world-winter-specials-202324-episode-2
The Grounded Orchardist 
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