Glorious Goodnestone, Part III: The Walled Garden

The British do it a walled garden : solid , enclosed and often romanticist , they are private spaces where a lucky few get to garden and where visitor can revalue their labour .

In the 21st Century those that continue are mainly naturalize as decorative yield , vegetable and cut flower gardens . Those attach to hotels and National Trust property are once again being relied on to provide intellectual nourishment for the fully grown sign of the zodiac . The fortunate ones , where money has been find for regaining , have find feature article such as glasshouses , duck pond and ananas stone . Heligan in Cornwall and Knightshayes in Devon are both wonderful example of workings kitchen gardens and are deserving a sojourn if are down in the West Country . Other walled garden , where productivity is no longer the main objective , provide the canvas for turn fond plant life collections , such as Trengwainton in Cornwall , or for the new contemporaries of planting designers , as at Scampston in North Yorkshire .

The origins of the walled garden are only pragmatic – a means of keep beasties out and the heat in . Us Brits experience in eonian denial of our climate , seeking every chance to cultivate plants which really should n’t survive our chill weather condition . At the very least we ’ve look for to hold out the growing season of many fruits and vegetables . Brick or stone walls not only give shelter , but also sop up and retain the sun ’s hotness , thereby creating a microclimate much more lucky than open ground . Despite our warmheartedness for these ‘ open air greenhouse ’ not a great trade is written specifically about them , which is a ruth . ( Could they be the topic of The Frustrated Gardener ’s first volume I marvel ? )

Goodnestone provides is an interesting representative of the organic evolution of the walled garden . In fact Goodnestone possesses not one , but a series of three walled enclosures , progress at a reasonable aloofness from the theater , although not as far as those atWallington , which we visited earlier this year . The first and second are now preponderantly heyday gardens , renovate in the 1960 ’s and 1970 ’s , so are , in a sense , mod . However the last is a mixed fruit , veggie and cutting garden . Sitting forthwith below the village church , with its wall garland by ancient wisteria , this in high spirits wall enclosing was used to farm Christmas tree before being restored in the 1970s . Other less fortunate fence gardens are still employed in this way , some only put to grass and grazed by sheep .

Now , espalier apple and Pyrus communis once again ache against Goodnestone ’s warm brick wall . The margin of the vegetable plots are plant with a mixture of annual and perennial for cut . At their peak in late September the Michaelmas daisies , hardy appendage of the Aster family , were precious stone - similar and splendid . Their multitude of pinks , reds and purples mingled with the golden yellow of rudbeckia – not a colour combining that many gardeners would be well-to-do with at other times of year , but in autumn it just works .

As 2013 begins to bow - out gracefully , it will be clip for the nurseryman at Goodnestone to start planning for the new yr . Over wintertime , the blood-red brick walls will provide the same warmth , tax shelter and tribute from four - legged wildlife that they have done for 100 . The garden may no longer ply for a rarified household , but it preserves a very classifiable , very British way of cultivation for all to admire .