Garden enclosed in high walls
A
walled garden
is a
garden
enclosed by high
walls
, especially when this is done for horticultural rather than security purposes, although originally all gardens may have been enclosed for protection from animal or human intruders. In
temperate climates
, especially colder areas, such as
Scotland
, the essential function of the walling of a garden is to shelter the garden from
wind
and
frost
, though it may also serve a decorative purpose.
Kitchen gardens
were very often walled, which segregated them socially, allowing the gardeners, who were usually expected to vanish from the "pleasure gardens" when the occupants of the house were likely to be about, to continue their work. The walls, which were sometimes heated, also carried fruit trees trained as
espaliers
.
Historically, and still in many parts of the world, nearly all urban houses with any private outside space have high walls for security, and any small garden was thus walled by default. The same was true of many rural houses and other buildings, for example religious ones. In palaces and most country houses, the whole plot, including even a very large garden, was also walled or at least fenced, sometimes with (much more expensive) metal railings along those parts of the boundary giving the best views to show off the splendour of the residence, as at the
Palace of Versailles
,
Buckingham Palace
and many others. In some cases there was originally a fence or hedging, but a wall was added later when funds allowed. In particular, hiring local labour to build a wall was considered a praiseworthy method of
famine relief
for the rich, and many walls round the grounds of country houses in the British Isles date to the
famine years of the 1840s
.
The horticultural, and also social, advantages of a walled garden meant that kitchen gardens often form or formed a walled compand within a larger walled compound. Sometimes this was for the security of the plants; in the 1630s the royal
botanical garden
of France (now the
Jardin des plantes
), itself walled all round, had an inner walled-off
tulip
garden, as the bulbs were valuable and prone to thefts.
[1]
Metaphorically
, "walled garden" may be used in many contexts (often pejoratively) to indicate a space, usually not a literal physical location, which is or is seen as closed to outsiders. One example is the
closed platform
in computing.
Creation of microclimates
[
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]
The shelter provided by enclosing walls can raise the
ambient temperature
within a garden by several degrees, creating a
microclimate
that permits plants to be grown that would not survive in the unmodified local
climate
.
[
citation needed
]
Most walls are constructed from
stone
or
brick
, which absorb and retain solar heat and then slowly release it, raising the temperature against the wall, allowing
peaches
,
nectarines
, and
grapes
to be grown as
espaliers
against
south-facing walls
as far north as southeast
Great Britain
and southern
Ireland
.
[
citation needed
]
The ability of a well-designed walled garden to create widely varying stable environments is illustrated by this description of the rock garden in the
Jardin des Plantes
in Paris'
5eme arrondissement
, where over 2,000 species from a variety of climate zones ranging from mountainous to Mediterranean are grown within a few acres:
The garden is protected from sudden changes in weather conditions and from harsh winds, thanks to its hollowed out terraces and the big trees .... The gardeners make the most of the northern or southern exposures and the permanently shady areas of this little, sheltered valley. Within just a few metres, temperatures can range from 15 to 20 degrees C, what one would call a micro-climate!
[2]
Heated walls
[
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]
A number of walled gardens in Britain have a
hot wall
or
fruit wall
, a hollow wall with a central cavity, or openings in the wall on the side facing towards the garden, so that fires could be lit inside the wall to provide additional heat to protect the fruit growing against the wall. Heat would escape into the garden through these openings, and the smoke from the fires would be directed upwards through
chimneys
or
flues
. This kind of hollow wall is found at
Croxteth Hall
in
Liverpool
(England), and
Eglinton Country Park
and
Dunmore House
, both in Scotland. At
Croome Court
an 18th-century cavity wall had a number of small furnaces to supply gentle heat (see below). In the 1800s, such walls were lined with pipes and connected to a boiler, as at
Bank Hall
in
Bretherton
.
Design
[
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]
The traditional design of a walled garden, split into four quarters separated by paths, and a
wellhead
or
pool
at the centre, dates back to the very earliest gardens of
Persia
. The
hortus conclusus
or "enclosed garden" of High Medieval Europe was more typically enclosed by
hedges
or fencing, or the arcades of a
cloister
; though some protection from weather and effective protection from straying animals was afforded, these were not specifically walled gardens.
Kitchen gardens
[
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]
In the United Kingdom, many
country houses
had walled
kitchen gardens
which were distinct from decorative gardens. One acre of a kitchen garden was expected to provide enough produce to feed twelve people, and these gardens ranged in size from one acre up to twenty or thirty acres depending on the size of the household.
[3]
The largest gardens served extremely large households, for example, the royal kitchen garden at Windsor was built for Queen Victoria in 1844 and initially occupied twenty two acres, but was enlarged to thirty one acres to supply the growing household.
[4]
Kitchen gardens received their greatest elaboration in the second half of the nineteenth century.
[5]
Many of these labor-intensive gardens fell into disuse in the twentieth century, but some have been revived as decorative gardens, and others used to produce fruits, vegetables or flowers.
Susan Campbell, in a book devoted to walled kitchen gardens, mentions several factors which contribute to how productive a kitchen garden is. Productivity depended upon the suitability of the situation, and successful gardens depended on the availability of water, manure, heat, wall space, storage space, workrooms, and most importantly, a dedicated team of gardeners.
[3]
Examples
[
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]
British examples of walled gardens can be found at
Alnwick Castle
,
Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens
,
Fulham Palace
,
Goodnestone Park
,
Luton Hoo
,
Osborne House
,
Polesden Lacey
,
Shugborough Hall
, and
Trengwainton Garden
in England;
Bodysgallen Hall
(Wales);
Edzell Castle
,
Muchalls Castle
and
Myres Castle
(Scotland).
The walled kitchen garden at
Croome Court
, Worcestershire is reputedly the largest 18th-century walled kitchen garden in Europe. It is in private ownership and has been restored by the current owners. In about 1806, a 13 ft (4.0 m) high free-standing east?west hot wall was built, slightly off-centre, serviced by five furnaces; this is historically significant as it is one of the first such structures to be built.
[6]
[7]
The walled kitchen garden at
Chilton Foliat
, Wiltshire, was the subject of the 1987 television documentary series
The Victorian Kitchen Garden
.
[
citation needed
]
In literature
[
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]
In the story of
Susanna and the Elders
, a walled garden is the scene of both an alleged tryst and an attempted rape.
[8]
Because of the walls, the community is unable to determine which actually occurred.
In
John William Waterhouse
's interpretation of the myth of
Cupid and Psyche
,
Psyche
lived in
Cupid
's walled garden.
Much of the storyline of
Frances Hodgson Burnett
's
children's story
The Secret Garden
revolves around a walled garden which has been locked for ten years. The author was inspired by
Great Maytham Hall
in Kent.
[9]
"
Rappaccini's Daughter
", a short story by
Nathaniel Hawthorne
, takes place almost entirely within the confines of a walled garden in which Beatrice, the lovely daughter of a mad scientist, lives alongside gorgeous but lethal flowers.
[10]
In
The Last Enchantment
, the third book in Mary Stewart's novels of the Arthurian legend, Merlin constructs a heated wall for his garden at Applegarth.
See also
[
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]
References
[
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]
- ^
Hobhouse, Penelope
,
Plants in Garden History
, 124-125, 2004, Pavilion Books,
ISBN
1862056609
- ^
Rodolphe Trouilleux,
Unexplored Paris
. Paris: Parigramme, 1996, 2009, p. 61
- ^
a
b
Susan Campbell,
Walled Kitchen Gardens.
Oxford: Shire Publications, 2013 (1998), p. 5.
- ^
Susan Campbell,
Walled Kitchen Gardens.
Oxford: Shire Publications, 2013 (1998), p. 6.
- ^
Susan Campbell,
A History of Kitchen Gardening
; Jennifer Davies,
The Victorian Garden
(1987, based on a BBC series)
- ^
Tovey, Jill (Archivist for the Croome Estate Trust) (2011),
A Summary of the History of Croome Walled Garden
, Friends of Croome Park
- ^
Historic England
.
"Garden Wall to Walled Garden to East of Croome Court and Gardener's Cottage in NW Corner (1349527)"
.
National Heritage List for England
. Retrieved
2 March
2017
.
- ^
Adele Reinhartz, "Better Homes and Gardens: Women and Domestic Space in the Books of Judith and Susanna", Stephen G. Wilson and Michel Desjardins, ed.,
Text and artifact in the religions of Mediterranean Antiquity,
2000, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 325-339, p. p. 334.
- ^
"Great Maytham Hall, Kent: the most famous garden in literature"
.
National Garden Scheme
. 2020-05-26
. Retrieved
2021-04-22
.
- ^
Lesley Ginsberg, “The Birth-Mark,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” and the Ecogothic", - Dawn Keetley and Matthew Wynn Sivils. ed.,
Ecogothic in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
, Routledge, 2017, 114-133, p. 115.
Further reading
[
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]