Chef patron Mark Birchall says late June is probably his favourite time of year as far as the kitchen garden at Moor Hall is concerned, as so much of the produce in the south-facing expanse to the rear of the country house finally reaches readiness.
A meal at the now three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Lancashire includes a tour of what was once a conventional walled garden but is now a significant source of ingredients and inspiration to the chefs who work next to, and occasionally in, it. As we wander round, restaurant director Nicolas Simon notes that the team of five gardeners is harvesting up to a kilo of raspberries per day and the courgettes we can see are destined for a current dish. Anise hyssop from the garden also appears later in a plate of turnip and crab on the epic ‘Provenance’ tasting menu, as do many of the other micro-herbs and vegetables.
The flavour of vegetables, herbs and fruit is at its best within the first 30 minutes of being picked, so the quicker it hits the plate, the better
Moor Hall’s kitchen garden may be one of the country’s most established – as well as one of the most immaculate – but it is not an anomaly. Chefs aren’t just chasing Michelin stars these days but bountiful and perfectly maintained kitchen gardens that emphasise the link between field and fork in their dining rooms.
Tommy Banks, the Michelin-starred chef from North Yorkshire, has a three-acre kitchen garden adjacent to his flagship restaurant, The Black Swan. ‘We’ve built terraces to make everything look a bit more Provence,’ he explains, while wandering past the apple and pear orchard to a polytunnel stuffed with lemon verbena. The smell is intoxicating – think lemon sherbets. ‘It’s my favourite herb,’ he reveals. ‘I use it for everything from desserts to brining – I even make a pale ale with it.’
On cue, a chef in his whites wanders by, trug in hand, in search of lovage and marigold flowers for the menu that night. ‘I prefer the marigolds to be harvested when the sun has been on them all day and the bees have taken their pollen – they are so much more flavoursome then. It’s these little things that make the difference,’ says Banks. Diners also like to wander the raised beds and regimented rows, aperitif in hand. ‘A kitchen garden is great for us to be able to grow all the weird and wonderful things we can’t buy elsewhere but it’s also nice for guests to walk around and see all the things on the menu,’ reasons Banks.
Birchall and Banks are among a rising number of chefs who have embraced the kitchen garden. The perceived wisdom is that the flavour of vegetables, herbs and fruit is at its best within the first 30 minutes of being picked, so the quicker it hits the plate, the better. In short, if you want optimum freshness, then a kitchen garden on your doorstep is the way to go. Creating one is not often cheap, given the costs of plants, seeds and labour but it’s a key selling point for a restaurant– who doesn’t love to see the ingredients on their plate growing outside the window, particularly at a time of increased interest in food provenance?
As one might expect, establishing a strong relationship between chef and gardener is key to overcoming the practical – and less romantic – aspects of establishing a bucolic supply line to the kitchen. Elliot Emery, head chef at Shaun Rankin at Grantley Hall, outlines the early days of the kitchen garden in the grounds of the 17th-century estate. ‘When it first started, there wasn’t a dedicated gardener and the planting wasn’t very efficient; they [the estates team] thought it looked better if everything was muddled up. There was stuff planted that we’d never use. It was originally made to look nice for guests, rather than primarily as a working garden.’
The full attention of Grantley Hall’s head gardener gave the planting more purpose and structure, as does ongoing experimentation and consultation, which helps determine and fine-tune exactly how much of each vegetable or herb the kitchen needs each season. ‘We always use carrots and next year we’re going to ask for twice as many,’ Emery says. The advice from gardeners can also help with menu planning. ‘We asked the gardener for kohlrabi but he was like “that’s quite hard to do”, so then he recommends something else to plant instead.’
A significant amount of what’s grown in the kitchen garden at Grantley Hall goes into garnishes, oils, pickles and the like. Lovage was used in a custard tart to accompany lobster; woodruff is used for chocolates. Emery explains how green rhubarb from the garden lacked the aesthetic appeal of the ‘fine-dining’ forced pink variety but packed much more of a punch, so it was made into a syrup to increase the intensity of the rhubarb flavour in a dessert.
The kitchen garden becomes an element of the storytelling during dinner
Emery’s sense is that the kitchen garden does reduce expenditure on certain ingredients but that’s largely because the gardener, in this particular case, is an expense borne by the hotel rather than the restaurant. More importantly than that, however, it forms part of the restaurant’s bigger quest for a green Michelin star and becomes an element of the storytelling during dinner, informing guests about the most local ingredients. ‘There’s a scroll placed on the table that lists maybe four or five different things that have come from here [the kitchen garden] or says where we foraged them,’ Emery says.
How the sums stack up is not the point for Banks either. ‘People who follow our story want to come here and eat because of it. Cheap food comes with a consequence, whether environmental, human, animal or all three,’ says Banks. ‘Whenever you do anything like this it’s clearly way more expensive but people want to be a part of it and it’s impossible to put a value on that. It’s a way of life and if you look at it like that then it makes more sense. It’s not about your GP [gross profit], it’s about telling a story and I’m viciously proud of that. I think it’s the future.’
Eight top restaurants with kitchen gardens
The Black Swan at Oldstead
Oldstead, North Yorkshire
Tommy Banks now has three restaurants but the Black Swan was his first, set in a formerly dilapidated pub in the village where he was born. He became head chef in 2013, a year after the restaurant won a Michelin star that has been retained ever since, and the Black Swan is now held up as a pioneer of the field-to-fork ethos, using much produce from the family farm and ingredients foraged locally. The tasting menu costs £175 and incorporates lesser-spotted components such as fermented celeriac, nasturtium, elderberry, Lion’s Mane mushroom and Douglas Fir into dishes of beef shortrib, hare and more, without feeling gimmicky. Three alcoholic pairing flights are available, culminating in a ‘rare & exceptional’ list that currently includes Pol Roger’s Sir Winston Churchill cuvée, Sadie Family Wines’ Columella and Staglin’s Salus from Napa. William Morris
L’Enclume
Cartmel, Cumbria
Simon Rogan’s groundbreaking restaurant in the southern Lake District regularly makes headlines, be it for three Michelin stars, achieved after 20 years in business, or its impressive sustainability measures. His latest offering is a one-of-a-kind tour of ‘Our Farm’, less than a mile from Cartmel, which has tripled in size since it was created in 2011 to supply produce to Rogan’s restaurants. Led by head farmer John Rowland and Our Farm head chef Liam Fitzpatrick, the tour culminates in an alfresco lunch amongst the polytunnels and growing beds, with dishes such as grilled turnip with bacon fat and roasted garlic, and salt-baked kohlrabi dressed in spinach butter. Fiona Sims
Moor Hall
Aughton, Lancashire
Moor Hall was a private residence until 2015, when Andy and Tracey Bell bought the Grade II-listed building with its five acres of land and began turning it into a restaurant with rooms, in a partnership with chef Mark Birchall. The main restaurant opened in 2017 and won its third Michelin star in early 2025. A saunter around the pristine south-facing kitchen garden reveals an impressive variety of produce, guests wandering past artichokes, beans, beetroot, quince, fruit trees, herbs, strawberries and much more, depending on the season. In summer, a snack from the tasting menu is served in the garden, one that, in 2025, incorporated fresh peas harvested from plants a few feet away. It’s natural to fret about the style of a restaurant at a country house hotel but both the food and dining room at Moor Hall feel thoroughly modern, with creativity and invention on show across almost 18 courses and an adventurous wine list. A more informal restaurant on the estate called The Barn has its own Michelin Star and the accommodation was recently deemed worthy of two Michelin Keys. Under Birchall’s stewardship, Moor Hall has risen to become one of the UK’s outstanding food destinations. WM
Padstow Kitchen Garden
Padstow, Cornwall
With views over the Camel Valley, seventh-generation farmer and former Rick Stein head chef Ross Geach (pictured) has developed an idyllic enterprise in the form of Padstow Kitchen Garden. He offers monthly field-to-fork dining events, cookery courses and fresh produce, from baby leeks and kale to edible flowers, which will likely turn up on your plate at one of his garden feasts, which start at £45. A typical menu might start with pan con tomate, followed by whole suckling pig (he keeps Cornish pedigree large blacks) with patatas bravas, broccoli, courgettes, and mojo verde, finishing with Basque cheesecake. FS
The Pig in the South Downs
Madehurst, West Sussex
‘The kitchen garden is rooted deep within the Pig Hotels’ DNA,’ declares one of The Pig’s hotel directors. The Pig in the South Downs, which opened in 2021, has one of the biggest kitchen gardens in the group, at nearly two acres, along with 4,000 vines of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier in the neighbouring vineyard, which was bottled for the first time in 2023. FS
Pythouse Kitchen Garden
West Hatch, Wiltshire
Sitting in glorious Wiltshire countryside within a perfectly preserved 18th-century walled garden, Pythouse Kitchen Garden is the brainchild of restaurateur Piers Milburn and head chef Darren Broom. Successful execution of the concept is also down to head gardener Annie Shutt, who manages the almost endless list of varieties grown, many of them visible from your table in the restaurant. The menu makes the most of the produce, with dishes such as charcoal roasted courgettes with citrus yoghurt and caramelised honey, and haunch of wild North Somerset venison with roasted carrots and pickled gooseberries. The garden is sufficiently productive that Pythouse even has its own non-alcoholic drinks brand, Sprigster Drinks, that uses ingredients grown on the property. FS
Shaun Rankin at Grantley Hall
Ripon, North Yorkshire
Grantley Hall may well be as close as a hotel gets to a mythical six-star rating, given the quality of the facilities and service on offer. While some guests may arrive by helicopter or in supercars, there is substance here beyond the ostentation, not least at Shaun Rankin’s Michelin-starred restaurant, where the ‘Taste of Home’ menu is inspired by his Yorkshire upbringing. The scroll placed on tables ahead of dinner indicates which ingredients across the 13-course tasting menu come from the kitchen garden or were foraged locally. Expect dishes such as asparagus, lamb sweetbread, morel and wild garlic (pictured); lobster, carrot, sea buckthorn and fennel; and wagyu beef rib with tartare, tongue, lovage and peppercorn. The ‘prestige’ wine flight impresses (as does use of the full Zalto range to serve it), and the dining room is sumptuous and palatial. Naturally, a visit here constitutes a blowout rather than budget weekend but the food is excellent and the luxury unrivalled. WM
Updown Farmhouse
Deal, Kent
The rambling 17th century Grade II-listed farmhouse near Deal is making waves not just for its robust flavours and chic interiors but for its kitchen garden too. ‘Updown was originally a working farm so it’s nice to have our own little agricultural corner,’ explains co-owner Ruth Leigh, who talks of the joy she derives in digging up potatoes and taking them straight to the kitchen. ‘And we have tomatoes growing just a metre from the pass,’ she adds, walking along the herb-edged path that connects the restaurant and the house. With a cocktail bar called Bar Vita created in one of Updown’s stable blocks at the start of 2026, a visit is more tempting than ever. FS
This article was originally written by Fiona Sims and published on 15 September 2023. It was updated and edited by William Morris on 21 January 2025 to incorporate additional quotes, details and listings.
