 |
 |
||||||||||
|
|
Clovelly Court Kitchen Gardens
.jpg) Clovelly Court kitchen gardens are a classic example of a Victorian walled kitchen garden including magnificent glasshouses sheltering peaches, apricots, melons and grapes. The unique maritime micro-climate also allows the growth of tender and exotic plants.
Other local gardens to visit: Broomhill. www.broomhillart.co.uk, email: info@broomhillart.co.uk
Castle Hill. www.castlehilldevon.co.uk, email: ladyarran@castlehill-devon.com
Docton Mill. www.doctonmill.co.uk, email: john@doctonmill.freeserve.co.uk
Hartland Abbey. www.hartlandabbey.com, email: ha_admin@btconnect.com
Heddon Hall. www.heddonhallgardens.co.uk, email: info@heddonhallgardens.co.uk
Marwood. www.marwoodhillgarden.co.uk, email: info@marwoodhillgarden.co.uk
RHS Rosemoor. www.rhs.org.uk/rosemoor, email: rosemooradmin@rhs.org.uk
Winsford Walled Garden. www.winsfordwalledgarden.co.uk, email: muddywellies@winsfordwalledgarden.co.uk
CLOVELLY’S SPECIAL CLIMATE
You only realise just how much we owe to the effects of the warm Gulf stream and our enviable sheltered position in the Bristol channel when you learn that Clovelly lies upon the same 51 deg. latitude as such other coastal towns and villages (travelling East around the world): De Kastri (USSR) - Katangli (Sakhalin Island) - Cape Lopatka (Kamchatka peninsula) - Cape Scott (Vancouver Island) - Allison Harbour (British Columbia) - Ha-Ha Bay and Croque (either side of Newfoundland).
De Kastri and Katangli lie opposite each other across the narrow and shallow Strait of Tartary, which often freezes in winter. The climate is severe the whole year through and the vegetation mostly coniferous. There are bears, foxes, otters, sables, and deer, while the rivers swarm with fish, especially salmon. The growing season averages less than 100 days a year!
Vancouver Island and Cape Scott are primal wilderness; no roads, only trails through thick forests hiding dangerous bears. Adverse weather conditions are the rule all year. Allison Harbour too has a severe climate the whole year round and Newfoundland is sub-arctic tundra country with whales and iceberges. Its seas abound with cod, herring, giant crabs and scallops.
If the benefit we now receive from the Gulf stream were to disappear due to the melting ice-caps, our seas would become unswimmable; icy cold at the height of summer with floating icebergs in winter. We could only grow just a very few edible things during a very short growing season and the deciduous part of our woods and forests would largely disappear. The landscape would look bleak, except in late spring and summer with a brief appearance of tundra flowers and grasses.
Clovelly happily today enjoys a unique micro maritime climate, thanks to the Gulf stream and its sheltered position. Flowers can bloom all the year round and tender and exotic plants thrive within the walled Victorian kitchen gardens of Clovelly Court.
But it is indeed startling to think how our landscape, flora, fauna and fish, could so inevitably and radically change to become totally unrecognisable to those who now live here if we were to lose the warmth from the Gulf stream flowing by our shores.
|
 |
