Helen Peacocke explains why an increasing number of restaurants grow their own produce

A growing number of pubs and hotels have now created kitchen gardens in their grounds so that they can provide their own ingredients and in some cases be almost self-sufficient. Many even keep bees so they can sweeten their food with their own honey and give their menus a competitive edge. Doing this provides chefs with an array of herbs, fruits and vegetables right on their doorsteps.

There is no need for them to wait for the greengrocer’s delivery van, and no need to worry about produce wilting in the heat of the kitchen. The joy of growing produce in a plot close to the kitchen is that nothing need be harvested until required. Optimum flavour is guaran-teed when herbs are picked whilst young – preferably when still moist from the morn-ing dew. The goal is to make the function of providing food aesthetically pleasing with plants chosen as much for their colour and form as their functionality.

Perhaps the most famous kitchen garden in Oxfordshire is Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Great Milton, where you will discover more than 70 varieties of herbs and 90 different vegetables arranged in an eye-catching display on the two-acre plot in the grounds of the hotel. It has appeared on television more frequently than most. Is there a chef who gets more excited by the produce their kitchen garden supplies? I doubt it.

Raymond is currently appearing on BBC 2’s Kew on a Plate with Kate Humble, whose passion for nature and wildlife led her to set up a working farm in Wales with her husband Ludo. Watching Raymond and Kate together discussing the fruits and vegetables on screen is inspiring – it’s impossible to decide who is the more enthusiastic about heritage vegetables and their flavours.

If the thought of visiting a picturesque well laid-out kitchen garden excites you, I suggest that you book yourself a tour of the potager garden at Le Manoir. Potager is a French term for an ornamental vegetable or kitchen garden, and stems from the gardens of the French Renaissance. Call Le Manoir on 01844 278881 for more information.

Fallowfields Country House Hotel, Kingston Bagpuize, has an impressive kitchen garden too. Its produce makes its appearance on the menu throughout the year. This means that when you are served a dish of Farrowfields’ asparagus it’s a dish to remember as proprietors Peta and Anthony Lloyd take great pride in being able to grow fresh produce which can be served in their restaurant.

Their kitchen garden, next to the hotel, is planted with wide variety of pesticide-free produce that provides the hotel’s chefs with a constantly evolving palette of tasty and colourful fruits, herbs, flowers and vegetables. During the spring and summer their kitchen garden will produce asparagus, artichokes, borage, broad beans, lettuce, lovage, peas purple sprouting, broccoli, radish, raspberries, spinach, spring onions and tomatoes. Courgettes and other autumn vegetables follow.

To help customers to follow the seasons, homegrown produce is listed on the inside cover of Fallowfields’s lunch and dinner menus, together with a list all local suppliers. It’s a great menu and no one can argue that it is not seasonal.

A trip to the outskirts of the Cotswolds through the beautiful Leach Valley will take you to another remarkable kitchen garden in the grounds of the Thyme estate set in the idyllic Cotswold village of Southrop.

This charming village with its 15th century Manor House, 17th-century village pub and Norman church is the perfect place for a day out, with the river Leach meandering through the landscape. The well-manicured grounds of the Manor, where tastefully converted barns and a superb cookery school incorporated into a tithe barn, stand in a cluster close to the Norman church.

It was here that super-model Kate Moss was married. Other local celebrities Gary Barlow and Jason Donovan are also regular customers of the village pub, The Swan, which is now part of the estate. No estate such as this would be complete without a kitchen garden, particularly as the pub boasts a great restaurant area.

Thanks to Caryn Hibbert, founder of the estate, the pub will soon be self-sufficient. Already hens, cockerels, geese, Gloucester Old Spot pigs, and Cotswold sheep are making their contrib-ution to the menu. Herbs, vegetables and fruits that flourish in the rich Cotswold soil of the Leach Valley are now appearing too. There is also a charming kitchen garden at the 15th-century Old Swan, Minster Lovell, which is certainly worth a visit too.