Growing The Menu

A country-style restaurant garden provides fresh, seasonal, organic ingredients for cooking

- Nick Vale

The first kitchen garden at the famed New South Wales restaurant Bells at Killcare was originally planted by former head chef, Cameron Cansdell.

Surrounded by a large expanse of formal gardens, manicured lawns and immaculately trimmed box hedges, and protected by a rustic post-and-rail fence and giant scarecrow, this tennis court-sized garden appears as a rural remnant of the area’s farming origins.

GARDEN GOODNESS

It’s no leaf-perfect vegetable garden, either, but a working garden, and one of three organic gardens at the boutique hotel and restaurant. “It’s more than just the convenience of growing fresh herbs and vegetables close to the kitchen,” says Cameron. “It’s about being able to prepare and serve freshly picked vegetables to customers within a very short time to maximise flavour.”

The kitchen gardens provide the Bells chefs with a culinary playground in which they can grow vegetables not available in the markets, including heirloom varieties, and develop and experiment with new tastes. The largest of the three is nearly the size of a football field. It’s planted out in a circular design with the larger crops in the back rows so they don’t shade plants, and a variety of different beans, Sicilian zucchini and other climbing vegetables scrambling up and over the fences.