Silver award presented to the Malaysian Garden  more »

“Our Garden is and integral part of the excellence of Le Manoir and I am very well aware that little things make a large difference. I am constantly in search of new ideas to make our garden an even bigger experience for each of our guests to enjoy”.
Raymond Blanc

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Le Petit Rapporteur : Asian Garden feature »

The Royal Horticultural Society's annual Chelsea Flower Show featured in 2005 a very special exhibit. Our very own RB, sponsored by Malaysia Airlines, has created the Asian Garden...

2005 saw an exciting development to our garden at Le Manoir, following the exhibition at RHS Chelsea Flower Show the garden was integrated within our own organic gardens.

It became a working vegetable garden. The herbs and vegetables reflect the different cultures that form Malaysia today, the indigenous Malay culture as well as the influences of China and India. The design is subtly woven within our organic garden so that the exotic flavours and textures of lemongrass and gingers, gourds and snake beans will sit along side the rows of horseradish, traditional vegetables and herbs which supply our kitchen. 

My trip to Malaysia brought home to me that many of the plants that are not indigenous to this country could grow here in the UK offering our farmers new opportunities. 60% of the food we eat today in Great Britain comes from other countries. Supermarkets already sell pots of coriander to grow on your window sill and soon ginger, lemon grass and turmeric will follow.

“Exotic seedlings are sprouting, soon a not so small corner of England will be forever Asian courtesy of M. Raymond Blanc” Damian Barr, The Sunday Times. 

Here Raymond shares his thoughts and experiences of creating the Asian Garden:

"Ten years ago I experimented by growing lemon grass in my organic garden at the Manoir. Though the conventional wisdom was that it wouldn’t grow in Britain, let alone in mid-Oxfordshire, it was hugely successful – I got a large, luxuriant crop of this fragrant herb that provides the background flavour for many of my dishes. 

This was my first gardening venture in thinking out of the box. I quickly realised that this could present opportunities for our farmers. After all, more than half of our everyday food plants are of non-European origin: maize, tomatoes, potatoes, most beans, marrows and squashes, chocolate, sugar, vanilla, coffee, tea – the list is very long and all of them are part of our culinary heritage. This kind of thinking is the rationale behind our Malaysian Garden at the 2005 Chelsea Flower Show.

Recently I have made several trips to Southeast Asia to look at food plants. (I’ve been going to Malaysia for ten years, at first like any tourist, for the sun and sand.) And I’ve realised that what I found there might present new opportunities for British commercial growers, with the environmental bonus of reducing the food miles involved in getting these crops to our plates.

We already eat many of these plants. We’ve changed culturally recently; we’re no longer insular. Our food has changed, our art has changed, even our clothes, houses (and of course technology) have changed. We are now in the lucky position of being able to absorb the wisdom and benefits of other cultures without losing our own culture. You don’t, after all, cease to be French (or British) by enriching your own culture and dishes.

It’s all been done before, anyway, as the example of Malaysia shows. When the Chinese came in large numbers to the Malay peninsula in the 15th century and married Malays, the wonderful Baba-Nonya cuisine evolved, adding slow-cooked dishes to Chinese rapid-cooking techniques, and local flavours such as lemon grass, tamarind and coconut, to the Chinese flavour repertory. 

Am I changing my métier from chef/hotelier to gardener? Of course not. 
I’ve too much respect for other professions, which, like my own, take so long to achieve proficiency in. It’s all very well to have an interesting idea, but it takes professional skills to realise it. Luckily at the Manoir I’ve got an understanding head gardener Anne-Marie, who is eager to experiment.

Even with such expertise available, money was still required. Malaysia Airlines understood the idea of project – and they did not help simply with plane tickets and great in-flight meals, but aided me with the actual horticultural research in Malaysia, and guided me in my efforts to comprehend Malaysian culture. 

Because of its treasure-chest of medicinal plants, its varying economic plants (how many people know that the country grows all three of the world’s most important plants, tea, coffee and cocoa, within its borders?), the world’s richest rain forest, and its beautifully adapted architecture – Peninsular Malaysia alone has more drama than any other country I’ve ever visited.

The turquoise seas and beaches are seemingly made for tourism, but there are also the lowlands with their mangrove swamps and virgin jungle, the delta crushing into the sea, the Cameron highlands with their British colonial heritage and their extraordinary variety of flora and fauna.

The drama of our Chelsea garden, with its distinct planting areas and its dramatically differing elevations, is inspired by the three chief cultures of the region – Chinese, Indian and Malaysian – and echoes that of the country itself, with its two halves – Peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo – and different climates.

In my research trips there, though I went to Mount Kinabalu, which is 4000 metres, the key moment for me was going from zero to 1500 metres (and from 35-20 degrees C), where you still have tropical vegetation in temperatures like those of Britain, but also the rarest orchids and medicinal plants along with ordinary Western vegetables. In fact most of the country’s commercial nurseries are located at this higher altitude.

This made me realise that it is imperative that we develop a form of benign tourism compatible with keeping all this. And it made me see that what I am doing is not so silly – that there are lessons applicable even for our own climate in England.

Malaysia boasts the world’s most diverse terrestrial ecosystem, the oldest rainforest, the largest flower, a fascinating fauna and a fantastic mixture of peoples and cultures, which gives it its unique cuisines. Our Malaysian Garden, which has become part of our extensive gardens at the Manoir, features a display of several hundred exotic edibles, from the unfamiliar vegetables and herbs that provide the flavour framework for the various Malaysian cuisines, to striking oddities such as the bright red reishi mushroom that grows in the boughs of a plum tree. 

These plants introduce us to whole new worlds of flavour that can enrich our own cooking and eating experiences, and the garden itself, while introducing Malaysia as a travel destination to hundreds of thousands of people, shows us a new opportunity for environmentally responsible farming."