Granary Oils & Warwickshire Walnuts are brands of TR Tame & Son of Burmington in South Warwickshire. The small farm was taken on in 1959 by John & Sheila and John’s mother and father. For the last 40 years it’s been pretty much Hay (often for Zoos, Race Horses & goats) & Sheep.
Granary Oils was started by David & Rachel Tame selling cold pressed walnut & rapeseed oils and hand creams.
Inspired by David’s father John who had been grafting fruit trees for 50 years on the farm and who had over the years planted many seedling walnuts David decided that he ought to plant some named cultivars to get better nuts. A figure of around 400 was decided on as that fitted the old pasture field they planned to use
The first few grafted Broadview went in 2013/14 and the following years another 40+ Broadview & Lara and some Franquette for pollination.
Note. Those first few Broadview turned our not be Broadview, we think they’re Wondur von Monrepos!
David’s brother Tom started sourcing and working with the trees in 2015 and over the next three years bringing his tree knowledge to bear and leaving David more time to run the farm and concentrate on the nut & oil side of the business. Over 300 trees went in by 2020, by this time the posts, wire mesh, ties and irrigation methods having been more or less sorted.
Another 300 went into a new Agroforestry orchard in winter 2022/3 and we’ve since added new Pecans, Hickories, Heartnuts in the existing orchards, filling gaps.
It was apparent early on that what information on commercial plantings in the UK and Northern Europe did exist was patchy at best and very subjective as it was based on small plantings in one part of the country or another, mostly Kent. Tom set about sourcing likely cultivars from around the world that hold promise in our conditions, these include many red kernel nuts (for niche markets such as patisseries) and nuts high in oil, we keep data throughout the year and maybe in 10 years we’ll have some real answers although we’ve learned much already.
We’ve decided as well as selling Oils, Nuts, Hand & Face Creams it makes sense to offer some of the trees we love as well and now have the largest range of grafted Juglans & Carya in the UK.
We will still continue to add new cultivars for trial as and when we find them, we’re expecting to get hold of some interesting scion wood this winter to graft (hopefully), mainly Juglans ailantifolia/cinerea/nigra.