Yeo (pronounced Yo) is from a saxon word meaning river, stream or water district. Yeo Valley is not officially marked on a map, but having visited it several times I can assure you that Yeo Valley feels like a real place to me.

Yeo Valley are best known for their range of yummy dairy products. As well as that they are also a great location to visit.  I was lucky enough to be invited to a food and garden tour at Yeo Valley this week. Next to the Yeo Valley farmhouse is the countries only certified organic ornamental garden.  Arriving at the organic gardens I breath out the city and take a moment to enjoy the beautiful mendip surroundings, the view of Blagdon lake and the gentle greens hills all around me. Then I head towards the eccentrically decorated tea rooms to meet up with the rest of the tour group.

We meet our guide, and head off into the gardens. We wander round the gardens, finding a new treat at every turn. We pause in every new section to hear about gardening techniques, planting choices and garden design ideas. Describing the tour simply doesn’t do it justice so here are my favourite pictures from the day.

At lunch time we get a fantastic cookery demonstration from Yeo Valley head chef Jamie. He shows us how to make flavoured butter, basil ice-cream and soda bread, all of which were absolutely yummy and will be added to my repertoire. Then we sat down to a delicious lunch.

Finally a talk on composting from the Yeo Valley head gardener. I have to admit it was a little too involved for me, since I have a city garden and don’t compost. However if composting is your thing then I’m sure it would have been very helpful.

The Yeo Valley organic garden tour makes a really lovely day out without the children. If however child care would be an issue for you, the whole family can visit the gardens and tearooms on Thursday’s and Sunday’s from April to October. For more details go here.

*Disclosure: I was given a tour of the organic gardens at no cost for the purposes of this post.