Rachel transfers her garden skills to kitchen
CARLOW businesswoman and renowned horticulturist Rachel Doyle is swapping her gardening gloves for an apron on Saturday week as she prepares to take part in the Carlow Culinary Christmas Cook-Off event.
Owner of the successful Arboretum garden centre and restaurants in Leighlinbridge in Carlow and at Kilquade in Wicklow, Rachel is no stranger to the kitchen.
She tells the Farming Independent that she would have loved to have studied home economics but the course was too expensive so she turned to horticulture instead, a passion of her father’s.
“We were not wealthy growing up. It cost €2,000 to study what was then called domestic science, which we wouldn’t have been able to afford at all. So I went to study horticulture in An Grianán,” says Rachel, who was nominated for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year competition in 2018.
Rachel adds that as a woman studying horticulture she faced many challenges as it is still a male-dominated career but she managed to graduate with a first-class degree at the age of 22.
In 1976 Rachel purchased a greenhouse and began growing and selling plants from her home garden.
Her husband Frank left “a good pensionable job” to join the business in 1979 and was a key driver in the business expanding to become the first garden centre/café in the country when it set up in Carlow town in 1985. In 2001, increased traffic congestion forced Rachel to move the business to a 10-acre site which the business purchased in Leighlinsbridge, but another major obstacle arose in 2009 when the M9 motorway was built.
“This was a huge blow to us — the business nearly collapsed as passing traffic nearly disappeared and the business was not allowed advertise on the motorway,” says Rachel.
Expand
In an effort to save the business she persuaded Frank and sons Barry and Fergal who run the business to invest €2m in the restaurant. It proved the right decision, and Rachel was able to expand and open a second business in Kilquade in 2015.
As a passionate cook, Rachel is excited about the cook-off due to take place in the Festive Family Experience event in Carlow on December 8; she will be cooking with comedian Karl Spain.
“I cooked with Karl before this and he was making all sorts of jokes on me, so I’m looking forward to a good laugh,” she says.
“I’ve no idea what we will be making but I think the skills of a horticulturist and cooking go hand in hand. If you’re a good gardener you’ll always be a good cook.”