Creating a climate-resilient kitchen garden

This course is aimed at gardeners who grow fruit and veg and want to improve the resilience of their plots and boost biodiversity.

Sally Morgan has long been interested in climate change. In recent years she has been looking at how we can make our gardens more resilient to the changes and this resulted in The Climate Change Garden which she co-wrote with Kim Stoddart. Sally and her garden was featured on Gardeners World on BBC2 in September 2025 and during the interview she explained how her garden was designed to be more climate resilient.

This intensive full day course looks at growing healthy organic fruit and vegetables, delving into soil, no dig methods, composting, mulching, cover crops, creating beds, raised beds and hugelkultur, boosting biodiversity, rotations vs polyculture, perennial veg, fruit growing and more, all with climate resilience in mind.

Perennial vegetables have a key role to play in the climate change garden. Sally has been growing a wide range of edible perennials at Empire Farm for many years. She has a small perennial veg garden as well as perennial edibles throughout the ornamental garden and she will discuss the options that are available including forest gardens, edible hedgerows and meadows.

The day includes a walk / talk tour of the kitchen garden, greenhouse and allotments.

Outline of the day

The day starts at 10 am, with arrival from 9.45 am and refreshments.

We break for lunch for an hour, during which time participants are able to wander around the gardens.

There is a final Q and A session and the course ends at about 4 pm, with afternoon tea and homemade cake.

Tickets

The cost of this course is £110 for the first person with a discount ticket of £90 for the second and third person booked at the same time. The numbers on these days are limited to 10 people. The price includes all tuition, course notes, a copy of one of Sally's books, seeds and some starter plants, a light lunch and refreshments during the day.

Cancellation policy - you can cancel with full refund up to 14 days before the course.

Finding us

Detailed directions will be sent out with the reminder around 7 days before the course.

The farm is just 8 mins walk from Templecombe railway station on the London Waterloo to Exeter line, so it is very easy to come from London, Basingstoke and Salisbury. There is an hourly service at the weekend.