School trips and garden tours by arrangement.

Contact Chris Adams (email: chris@betterfood.co.uk; phone 0117 935 1725) for details.

Barley Wood Walled Garden is the carefully restored Victorian kitchen garden that we currently run as an organic market garden. It's a 2 acre site on a gentle, southern facing slope with views overlooking Wrington Vale and the Mendip hills.

The glasshouses at the top of the gardens provide valuable warmth for seedlings and crops such as tomatoes and cucumbers.

Walk through the main arch and down an old brick path and you will come across a lily pond with a hive of aquatic life also used for irrigating the gardens. Further down the path dividing the garden are two ancient yew hedges bordering an herbaceous border packed with beautiful flowers in the Victorian style with small plants at the front, banking up to taller ones at the back. In the summer these borders are a rainbow of breathtaking colours, flowers of all kinds attracting butterflies and bees from the neighbouring beehives. This is arguably the most beautiful part of the garden, especially in high summer. Sitting on the small garden bench taking in the sounds, smells and views over the hills will feed the most demanding of souls.

You'll find the most incredible variety of fruiting and flowering plants here. Old fashioned espalier and cordon fruit trees grow up the walls, blossoming in spring to create a lacy blur against the warm brick. The soft fruit beds have blackcurrants, loganberries, tayberries, raspberries, strawberries, and beautifully fan-trained gooseberries.

The legume and leaf crop beds rotate, along with potatoes, roots, alliums and brassicas, around the garden. Through the bottom gate, outside the walls, are the asparagus beds and beyond these is our field production for vegetables. The field has a diverse wild life population that includes buzzards, deer, rabbits and weasels. At the bottom is a wild area and a brook fed from a series of strong springs which used to grow watercress for the main house. The glasshouse has a fruiting vine which is being nurtured back to health by the head gardener.

The Better Food Company are proud to be the custodians of this wonderful piece of our heritage, and it's here for all to enjoy. The gardens have many other features which all go to make this a place to visit and learn from as part of a day out with friends and family.