Garden Studios

Inside The National Trust, a 20-part series that starts on Sunday, takes viewers backstage with presenter Michael Buerk.

And one of several people showing Michael around is head gardener Amanda Thackeray, who has worked at Wordsworth House and Garden for 10 years.

Amanda takes Michael on an edible tour of the Georgian town house garden, which isn’t only organic but uses Georgian horticultural methods and plants that may were grown when the poet William Wordsworth and his sister lived there.

Amanda introduces Michael to the taste of Nasturtiums, marigolds and old herbs similar to sorrel, Welsh onions and borage.

“We just picked the flowers off the plants and had a nibble,” says Amanda, who adds: “You can eat most herb flowers.”

As well as herbs there are numerous heritage kinds of fruit and vegetables grown at Wordsworth House, that’s in Cockermouth in Cumbria.

These include apples akin to Green Up’s Pippin and Keswick Codlin, and Amanda says: “We have had one of these bumper crop of apples this year that i’ve got wheelbarrows choked with windfalls and notices asking visitors to thrill help themselves and take them home to make apple pies and crumbles.”

The whole of Wordsworth House garden is enclosed in a wall, which needed to be repaired after the 2009 floods, then within that could be a kitchen walled garden for visitors to enjoy.

“We have plenty of cabbages and the sweet peas are still going well,” says Amanda. “It is laid out like a potager with hazel poles and pea sticks. Everything is find it irresistible would were in Georgian times.

“The holly is truly nice currently since it has got a lot of berries and there are big red, orange and black rose hips at the rose bushes.”

Also looking good are the garden’s tall purple Verbena bonariensis and drifts of white phlox and the greeny-white spikes of Sanguisorba and yellow Rudbeckia.

The garden also has a Poetry Tree. Visitors can write a poem, that is laminated and hung from the tree.

“I got Michael to jot down a poem for me and that i wrote one for him,” says Amanda. “I think he enjoyed himself because he was doing things he had not done before.”

This includes making soapy liquid from soapwort for laundry clothes: “Soapwort is lovely, it has lovely little pink flowers which might be edible,” says Amanda. “All of the plant can be utilized, and the roots are used to make the soapy liquid.

“You have be cautious with them because they’re poisonous,” she warns, “but to make the soapy liquid you scrub them really clean, chop them up and boil them in rain water for 20 minutes.

“We didn’t do the most effective job – I certainly wouldn’t employ Michael as a chef,” laughs Amanda, “but after getting strained the liquid you have a soapy substance it truly is good for cleaning difficult hair and gentle fabrics.”

Amanda advises anybody curious about growing herbs to exploit an area supplier, that you will be capable of finding on the web.

But she adds: “You must also get yourself a very good book about herbs, that will identify them and know what you’re growing.”

Inside The National Trust starts on Sunday, October 6, at 12.25pm and runs weekly until February 9, with Wordsworth House featured in about 1/2 them.

There also are starring roles for the NT’s Sizergh, in Cumbria, the Wimpole Estate, in Cambridgeshire, Cragside, in Northumberland, and the Farne Islands.

For additional info visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk.