Peter Fluck’s newest kinetic sculpture ‘La Jotta’ has been installed at Kestle Barton this week as part of his outdoor exhibition this season in the gardens – Peter Fluck Mobiles: 2011 Annual Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition. This mobile is named after a Spanish-Mexican dance and boasts strong colours and elaborate movements in the wind.
In Abundance: Kestle Barton’s Flower and Vegetable Show ended after the Bank Holiday Monday this week, but not before the prizes were awarded. First Prize in Best of Show was awarded to Fin McMorran for Women and Sheds, her ten 1-minute animated interviews with women about their garden sheds displayed on an interactive DVD inside a shed in the garden.
Renee Kilburn was awarded second prize with her Yellow Lilies Jug in the category of Prize Winning Bloom.
Katie Spragg visited Kestle Barton from London and was able to collect her third prize rosette for Insect Life category in person for her commemorative plates of the ‘top five garden pests’. 
The outstanding wild flower mixture has bloomed again on top of the stone hedgerows surrounding the Kestle Barton gardens. Many visitors ask for details of this mixture so please find link to Pictorial Meadows website. The exact mixture planted on our stone hedgerow is ‘short-02′.
Pictorial Meadows website is http://www.pictorialmeadows.co.uk/
Photograph by Martin Grimshaw 2011
The Newlyn Society of Artists (NSA) has made several site visits to Kestle Barton this month in preparation for a collaborative project set for next years exhibition schedule of 2012.
Boaden Lyne, former owner and farmer of Kestle Barton, returned earlier this month to visit the garden in his ‘mowhay’ and enjoy a spot of sunny weather. While enjoying his coffee we took the opportunity to discuss the orchards with him and the apples that should be ready soon for harvesting. As always, it was a great pleasure to have him ‘return to Kestle‘.
Local artist, Deborah Barton, has taken our invitation to paint in the garden very seriously this summer. There have been several sightings of her working hard at her latest watercolour paintings, protected from the sun by her straw hat and serenaded by the bees.
Alison Bunning, architect at Kestle Barton, and Johnny Cann, our lovely foreman and now director of KPK builders, being presented with the Green Apple Award 2011 for The Built Environment and Architectural Heritage, by the inventor Trevor Bayliss. Alison beat the famous conservation architect Donald Insall for the gold in this category, making us all extremely proud of her.
Alison Bunning receiving the prestigious Cornish Buildings Group Award 2011 from the chairman, on behalf of Kestle Barton this year.
Kestle Barton celebrated the ‘leaf break’ on our first chestnut and walnut saplings with an informal gathering and tour on Friday 6 May 2011.
For the moment Kestle Barton has a ‘tea tent’ set up in the garden due to setbacks in our plan to have a Tea Hut ready when we opened. The more permanent Tea Hut should be ready by the end of May and is really a glorified shed with an honesty box, help yourself hot beverages, a few baked goods and ice cream. The tea tent is a similar situation (no ice cream yet though) with a donation cup laid out alongside a kettle with tea making supplies and flasks of coffee and a decaf option.
