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Joyce understands Lynwood’s reluctance to continue with
their garden, but argues for a wider view. “When you do the
budgeting, gardens never make huge amounts of money”, she
explains. “There’s a lot of grunt but not much in return in
the mark-up on a vegetable, whereas when you take them into
a kitchen and go chop, chop, chop, three lengths on a plate
or three leaves on a plate, suddenly the value of the
restaurant garden
grows huge. To me the real value of the garden at Lynwood was its
magnetic quality. It drew the people there. The message was
‘there is fresh food growing and we’re going in here to eat
it’. There’s got to be a connection” she insists.
Joyce told us about their visit to
Primo in the United States. This restaurant
in coastal Maine employs a master gardener, and vegetables, if at all possible,
are picked that morning from their extensive gardens.
“You drive into a place
where you’re going to eat and you’re surrounded by gardens which are full of
food. You can be surrounded by any kind of garden, but if it’s attached to a
restaurant, why not make it vegetables? If it’s going to be beautiful, you have
to pay a gardener, so it might as well be growing food.” Michael and Joyce
suggest that any surplus vegetables produced could be sold to visitors.
“Just have a market stall at the front door with an honour system” suggests
Joyce. “It makes a special connection for the clientele.”
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