Vanessa Cook- Stillingfleet Lodge Gardens

Yorkshire Post

Vanessa Cook an inspiring 80-year-old with a lifetime of expertise in horticulture, put to amazing use in her four-acre gardens near York, Stillingfleet Lodge Gardens. Her garden nursery celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Video Shot for the Yorkshire Post by Bruce Rollinson

Transcript

00:00I'm Vanessa Cook and I live at Stillingfleet Lodge garden and we run a garden that's open

00:17to the public and we have a nursery where we grow lots of interesting plants.

00:21I'm sitting at the moment in the front garden which was the first bit of the garden that

00:26we ever developed.

00:28When we bought the house in 1975 it was a very run down house in a grass field.

00:35There were no trees here at all and there was certainly no garden and for the first

00:40year we lived in a caravan, we did up the house and we planted a shelter belt which

00:46we now grandly call the woodland walk but actually it's the one thing that protects

00:51us from the very strong west winds and allows us to have a garden here at all.

00:56To begin with for the first ten years we were here we were the good life I think.

01:02We had a house cow, we had pigs, we had sheep, we had chickens and geese and we grew all

01:09our own vegetables and we certainly didn't have a garden and we wanted to bring up our

01:15children to realise how important it was to be organic and for fifty years we've been

01:22here we have been totally organic.

01:26We're very lucky because we have chickens in the garden so when people come round the

01:29garden they say how can you possibly be organic when all your hostas haven't got holes in

01:35them.

01:36Well that's because we've got guinea fowl and chickens all over the garden and they

01:40are my slug pellets I think.

01:42Since the first ten years we were here from then I went to Ascombe Brown and did my three

01:48years horticulture and then I started a very small nursery which seemed to get bigger and

01:56bigger unexpectedly and we then started developing the garden so that I had more plants from

02:03which to grow plants to sell in the nursery because here we buy in very very little plants

02:09nearly all of it is grown from plants we have got growing here which means if you come to

02:14look at the garden you can see a plant in the garden you can go to the nursery and you

02:18can buy it and if it's pouring with rain you can go in the cafe and have wonderful

02:23homemade cakes very good coffee and have a lovely time just having a peaceful tranquil

02:29time in a typical English country garden.

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