Chewton Glen is a privately owned luxury Country House Hotel & Spa, surrounded by idyllic landscape, on the fringe of the New Forest. The Estate covers 135 acres including a golf course and croquet lawn, kitchen, nursery and formal gardens, orchards, flower displays, parklands, woodlands - all managed by a team of ten dedicated gardeners.
We worked closely with Chewton Glen's Estate Manager Darren Venables, learning about the impressive work he and his team undertake on site. The garden and greenhouse are at the heart of the cookery school, allowing guests to harvest ingredients for their classes and get a real sense of cooking 'from plant to plate'.
As one of the only companies to offer a turn-key service, Alitex were the stand-out choice for Chewton Glen. From creating the perfect design, to providing the groundwork and base to the installation of the greenhouse and its accessories. They were impressed with the range of colours on offer and the styles that allowed them to add their own bespoke touch to the final design.
Chewton Glen chose the 'Cliveden' greenhouse from our National Trust Collection. The structure is powder-coated in graphite grey; a striking colour sitting comfortably in the beautiful kitchen garden. Used for a variety of crops, it is replenished daily during the summer as the classes come out to pick the salads, micro salads and herbs that they want to take into the cookery school. During the winter and early spring, the greenhouse is used for the first stages of seed germination, as the heating system is very effective in providing a consistent germination.
The gardeners are most impressed with the heating, ventilation and shading system as it allows them to achieve a regular temperature even on the coldest nights, or the hottest summer's day - enabling control of the temperature all year round.
The kitchen features a cooking salon with 12 fully-equipped cooking stations, a dedicated kitchen garden; providing ingredients for the cookery students, an informal restaurant with open plan kitchen and pizza oven, private dining and, of course, an Alitex glasshouse.
Estate Manager, Darren Venables praised the installation - "We gave Alitex a vision of exactly what we wanted and they were able to buy into that vision straight away, they are a very similar company to Chewton Glen and share the same high standards and customer service ethos. The greenhouse we have we are delighted with, it does everything and more and we are now starting to look into Alitex creating an orchid house for us."
