This week the grounds team have been busy planting more apple trees and fruit bushes in the walled garden and around the estate. We are creating a new orchard in front of the castle for dessert and cider apples such as Bloody Ploughman, Red Devil, Katy, Fiesta Discovery and King of Pippen. It might look like we chose them just for their amazing names, but the boring reason is that they’ve grown very well in the walled garden and given us consistently good yields. I can’t wait to try a Bloody Ploughman though!
The 2026 planting schedule will give us 650 apple trees, 100 plum, gage, damson and cherry trees, about 20 pear trees and roughly 80 blueberry bushes. The apples are mostly destined for the distillery and will become eau de vie, apple brandy and apple mistelle, which was a huge hit when we released it in autumn last year.
Niall is thinking up some interesting things to do with the pears and the stoned fruit such as the gages and damsons. Look out for more delicious things coming out of the distillery!
The soft fruits will mostly be used for jams and chutneys in the café with plenty jars for sale too as our visitors absolutely rave about it.
Part of the estate project for 2026 also includes reinstating some of the old paths which can be shown on the old maps that we have. This will open the estate up even more to visitors and we hope to have proper information boards strategically placed which will also enhance the visitor experience. All paths lead to the café of course where you will be able to sample some of our home-grown produce in either spirt, jam or cake form!
