It’s a grey but mild day in mid-September when we arrive at Matthew Rice’s home in Oxfordshire, and within minutes, we’re drawn into his world of colour, from his botanical sketches and vibrant watercolours to a greenhouse brimming with technicolour tomatoes and vibrant annuals despite the imminent change of season.

You’ve likely admired Matthew’s work already - his illustrations adorn the beloved Emma Bridgewater pottery collections, including a vast collection of florals inspired by what grows in Matthew’s garden at Ham Court, his home in Bampton. He also leads watercolour workshops, has published several books themed on architecture, and even hosts a circus (Fools Delight) at his home. 

Last month, we were fortunate enough to spend a balmy afternoon on the Balmoral Estate, where they are currently using our cloches to help manage their beautiful kitchen garden, which was blooming with seasonal edibles such as parsley, chard and spinach during our visit. The formal gardens cover some three acres and also contain a range of Victorian glasshouses and the conservatory, which displays flowering pot plants throughout the year.  

Kirsty, the kitchen gardener at Holkham Hall in Norfolk, shares how she uses cloches to germinate, protect and grow.

How does a working walled kitchen garden use cloches to increase productivity? This is the question we asked Kirsty, who heads up the Holkham Hall kitchen garden. In this garden, food is grown for the main house, in addition to the restaurant and cafés they have on the estate.

With Spring fast approaching, we're focussing on preparing our vegetable garden for a productive year. We catch up with Glenn Facer, head kitchen gardener at Chatsworth, on his tips for using cloches to grow vegetables, fruit and herbs in February and March.

A cloche traps sunlight to create an environment for plants to flourish. Our cloches’ cast-iron construction gives them ample thermal mass to create a long-lasting microclimate

A cloche provides shelter not only from icy blasts of winter but also drying summer winds. Weighing over 30lbs, our sturdy cast-iron cloches are built to withstand the fiercest gales.

With careful planning a cloche can be used throughout the entire season protecting different plants at various stages of their growth.

A cloche provides protection from unwanted critters, large or small.

The warm microclimate underneath a cloche is an ideal environment for new cuttings to develop their roots.

A cloche is designed to form a watershed so that the rain falls away from the collar of the plant yet reaches the roots.

In the Victorian-era, many British country houses used cloches extensively and they became very popular in the gardens of large estates.

Cloches warm the soil underneath them, making seed sowing possible much earlier in the season, while also obtaining a higher percentage of seed germination.