Tatton Park shares fresh Kitchen Garden produce with local community
Tatton Park has teamed up with the Welcome Café in Longridge to deliver fresh produce to their community café every Monday. With an abundance of home-grown vegetables from Tatton Park’s Walled Kitchen Garden, the best of the crop is picked, packed and delivered to the Welcome Café ready to be used in their in their weekly meal deliveries to isolating local residents.
Field to Fork
Normally, produce is regularly picked from the Kitchen Gardens by Tatton Parks Gardeners and used in seasonal dishes for the Stableyard Tea Room and onsite Restaurant. Simon Tetlow, Tatton Park’s Head Gardener explains how he didn’t want to see fresh food going to waste.
We have been creatively thinking of ways to support Cheshire East and local Knutsford residents during this time. The Kitchen Garden at Tatton Park has so much produce to share. It’s great to be doing something for our local community. It is important to stick together during this time, and helping each other out is what will get us through this.
A great partnership
The Welcome Café provides free meals to the local community and also runs a small food bank. Sarah Riley, Centre Manager, has been putting together food parcels for people in lockdown or isolation and delivering hampers for free to those in need. They have also set up a stall outside the café with free bread and milk for residents to collect. This week Tatton Park’s Head Gardener, Simon, delivered 24 heads of lettuce and 15 - 20 kilograms of delicious Rhubarb to the café for use in its food hampers. Sarah explains;
We have always had a great partnership with Tatton Park. Thanks to their fresh food donations, the café is now able to provide people who are self isolating, with fresh produce as well as tinned and canned. With coronavirus, our operation has become much larger and we are trying to provide hot ‘meals on wheels’ Monday – Friday to local people in need.
In the last 4 weeks we have made up over 135 food hampers and this week I am making a large crumble with the fresh rhubarb from Tatton Park to add to everyone’s meal deliveries as a sweet treat after their dinners.
The Tatton Park Vision
The `Tatton Park Vision’ is the park’s 5 year vision for its visitor activities and aims to substantially develop its visitor experience by increasing the attractions and activities on offer. In delivering the vision the aim is to fully realise Tatton Park’s potential and present the best possible experience for its current and new visitors in order to provide new and sustainable income to help manage and conserve the historic estate into the future. This will be done through a programme of investment by Cheshire East Council and the attraction of new business. For more information about the vision visit www.tattonpark.org.uk/vision