Sarah Raven - A Year Full of Veg: A Harvest for All Seasons

The central pot features dahlias, salvias and lemon verbena for edible flowers and tisanes; these tender perennials are brought in for winter and planted out again the following spring.

There are two things I want from my garden. It has to be beautiful, jam-packed with flowers, form and colour and it has to produce lots of delicious, fresh, homegrown food. Ive loved cooking since I was a child and have always known that homegrown is best, so a kitchen garden has been a long-standing priority.

Few things give me more pleasure and help me relax and wind down at the end of the day and at the weekend than wandering through the vegetable garden and into the greenhouse, first to see whats looking good and then to decide what to eat. It feels like a luxury not to have to travel anywhere to buy fresh food, and thats better for me and better for the environment.

Once you start growing your own, you can make sure your easy-to-grow favourites are there week by week, changing as the year goes on. In winter, I adore picking enough leaves for a punchy salad, as well as a basket of kale for dinners and lunches, and then Im thrilled when the rhubarb starts in spring, and the early broad beans and peas towards the end of the season. I love being able to dig new potatoes and pick courgettes and runner beans as baby vegetables, tiny and tender and at their absolute best in summer, and then by midsummer, enjoying tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. By autumn, meaty aubergines are on offer, and finally the squash, before were back around to the salads and kale again. Having this ever-changing freshness keeps my cooking on its toes, with a hand-picked harvest there whenever I want it.

If we grow too much for us (thats Adam, my husband, and I, plus sometimes a grown-up child or two, home for the weekend), then the team at Perch Hill get first dibs and pick what they like to eat. Anita Oakes is in charge of growing the vegetables here, with Josie Lewis overseeing all parts of the garden they have their favourites, as do the rest of the team, which all make it into the garden. Together, we grow colanders and colanders of fresh edibles, which we also integrate into our lunch menu in the Perch Hill caf when the garden is open. Pretty much nothing goes to waste.

Abundance and ease

In the parts of Perch Hill given over to vegetables, I have concentrated my efforts (over what is now thirty years) on trying to ensure that we get the maximum amount of delicious produce from every corner, throughout the year. Thats my number one driver as far as edibles go year-round, square-metre productivity. Its why most of the vegetable garden is devoted to cut-and-come-again plants, which we can harvest on one day, only to find that a week later we can do so again. These cut-and-come-agains provide us with the most efficient productivity. Thats why classics such as cabbages and maincrop potatoes dont usually make it into my plot, while salad leaves, plenty of herbs and leafy greens always do.