Sustainable No Dig kitchen gardening and Natural beekeeping classes using well proven techniques that have stood the test of time.

People are recognizing the vital connection between health, agriculture, and our environment. At Dunmore Country School, we will help you grow tasty vegetables in a sustainable, intensive, and cost-effective way.

Our kitchen garden, situated on a one-acre plot with a polytunnel, is based on the traditional French 'potager,' or kitchen garden using lazy beds. We produce and preserve almost all of the vegetables and herbs we need for the year. We also incorporate flowers into our rotation system, which serves both a beautiful and practical purpose. It helps balance the garden, eliminating the need for any insecticides. 

Won't it take a lot of time?

When people come to talk to us about starting a garden, they often say, 'But it will take a lot of time,' or 'How will I control the weeds without spraying?' We have devised a simple, workable gardening system, the secret of which is to start small, get used to the techniques, reap the rewards, and then gradually increase the size of the plot. Our system shows you how to make the best use of a small piece of ground and how to sow vegetables in a way that requires a minimum amount of weeding. We will even show you how to make weeding easy using simple mulching techniques.

Growing and eating your own food

The main reason for starting a garden is to enjoy your own healthy, tasty vegetables. Tanguy and Isabelle will be happy to share their tips for cooking and preparing/preserving your vegetables.

Gardening Courses

We have set up a working kitchen garden on one acre with a polytunnel. You will learn how to produce your own food in a sustainable way. We use simple mulching techniques called 'No-dig.' Not only is it good for the soil, but it is also a great way to save time and your back.

Another interesting concept that we apply at Dunmore Country School is 'energy transfer.' Basically, you use every bit of organic matter produced by the garden and use it to fertilize the vegetable beds. Grass clippings, leaves, hedge clippings, comfrey leaves and even weeds are carefully harvested and reused elsewhere. It is a good technique to create areas with different levels of fertility. The poorest areas are called meadows, and they help maintain good overall biodiversity in the garden. In return, you will use no spray because the garden becomes balanced. It is a great system to improve biodiversity and maximize the use of carbon.

Cooking and preserving:

Our kitchen garden is not a market garden. We do not sell vegetables; they are produced for our own consumption. This is an important point because we are focusing on the ratio of energy spent to produce/yield. The trick is to maximize the yield by working with plants and nature. We will show you how you can grow two sets of crops per year. I said crops because in most of the beds, I would use interplanting and intercropping. This allows you to grow sets of crops that provide vegetables in succession. We believe that good recipes and preserving techniques are especially important. There is no point in producing top-class veggies if you do not know how to prepare them. We will share some of our tips. In some of the courses, Isabelle will cook fresh and seasonal vegetables for your lunch.

Natural Beekeeping Courses

French Courses