The Holkham Estate's Connection with the Community Growers' Scheme

The Community Growers' Scheme was set up by Glyn Kirpalani of Norfolk Heatwave after he realised that sourcing Scotch Bonnet peppers in large quantities for his 'Hot Pepper Sauce' required flying them in from Holland or Uganda.  This was expensive in both monetary and environmental terms - and since all other ingredients were sourced locally where possible he decided to launch this novel scheme as a way of locally sourcing the peppers. The scheme provides customers and local residents with Scotch Bonnet chilli-pepper seedlings propagated from seeds in his own greenhouse. Come harvest time, Glyn buys back the harvest from the farmed-out plants at an attractive price enabling his sauce to be made with environmentally friendly Norfolk Scotch Bonnet peppers - while also providing a modest income to local residents who garden for pleasure, but have never sold their home produce before.

The Holkham Estate is providing the backbone of the Community Growers' Scheme effort, currently growing several dozen Scotch Bonnet plants (with plans for up to 200 in total) in the Victorian greenhouses - as well as providing some of our other fresh estate-grown seasonal vegetables for use in the manufacture of our very own bottles of 'Holkham Hot Pepper Sauce', which will be made by Norfolk Heatwave exclusively for sale in the Holkham Gift Shop and the Beach Cafe on Beach Road, Wells-next-the-Sea.

In 2011 the total of harvested Scotch Bonnet chillis in our greenhouses was 3169 grammes and 7755 grammes of other types of chilli.