From Glasshouse to Plate
From Glasshouse To Plate: A Gardens Team and Warwick Food Group Collaboration
Warwick Food Group have been working closely with the Gardens Team at Wellesbourne campus to rejuvenate one of some unused glasshouses, bringing fresh, campus-grown produce to our plates at Eatwise Test Kitchen and Gibbet Hill Café.
The initiative started from a conversation between Kelly Baker, Head of Ground and Gardens, and Matt Drew, Director of Food and Beverage, about ways in which they could collaborate to add campus produce into the Eatwise menus to serve the campus community. The benefits including Placemaking, carbon reduction, seasonality and provenance. They explored options, such as using raised beds outside University House, making use of produce from the student allotment, and restoring unused glasshouses at Wellesbourne. It was decided that the latter would be most feasible and practical, and Kelly began scoping the works required and planning a first year to learn what would grow easily and most consistently, based on Eatwise menus and the needs of the kitchen. The refurbishment was funded by CCSG as one of the strategic enablers of environmental sustainability and the glasshouse was functional again from the beginning of 2025. The sowing and growing of crops is managed by the existing gardens team and together with WFG, they’ve been working on operationalising the plan, to find the best way of supplying the produce to the Eatwise production kitchen.
The Kitchen team began receiving crops in the spring, they’re transported from Wellesbourne to main campus using an electric vehicle fleet.
Successful crops include tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers, chillis, chard, lettuce and basil, these can be found in various salads on the salad bars in ETK and Gibbet Hill Café, as well as other dishes. The leaves work as the base of the salads, tomatoes work beautifully in a salad with sumac and the chillis are used to pep up the marinated bean salad, to name a few.
The plan is to learn from this first year of growing, looking at what varieties have grown best and exploring ways to extend the growing season in the glasshouse so campus can benefit from more of this delicious, campus-grown produce.
The Glasshouse Journey in Pictures:
Initially the garden team levelled the floor.
Then they installed the flooring.
Followed by the benches to grow the produce on.
All of the produce was grown from seeds.
Our produce flourished!
