While many remain hidden behind tall bricks held up by ivy and moss-eaten mortar, more and more of Britain’s historic walled gardens are being restored to their former splendor.
Dating back to the time of Adam and Eve, the walled gardens were created to be paradise on earth. In fact, the first were made for the kings of Persia and were called paraida. This was translated in Greek as paradisos, which means heavenly place.
The remains of one are near my house, in the grounds of an old ancestral estate in Suffolk. There, behind a small splintered wooden door, lies an enchanted world.
Wiry tendrils of vines twine around what remains of a clematis, a bindweed and a honeysuckle compete to topple an ancient apple tree, lethal-looking brambles choke the life out of dying bushes, all engaged in a fight for survival.
In all the British Isles there are thousands of identical specimens; Nobody knows the exact figures.
A door leading to a secret garden in Wiltshire – or is it a door to enchantment?
The Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall feature a blooming lilac arch in the center (above)
Generations ago, these few enclosed acres, a sunny spot sheltered from the wind, supplied fruit and vegetables to the aristocratic occupants of the Big House (now gone, torn down in the 1950s when so many country houses were too expensive to maintain). , were reduced to rubble.
Some buildings were saved, one of them, the old home of the farm workers, is where I live. As for the walled garden, once the property was divided, it had been left free.
What happened over the centuries in this heavenly paradise, I could only imagine: rows upon rows of lettuce, radishes, beds of strawberries, forests of green beans twisting bamboo pergolas, tomatoes planted in perfectly perpendicular lines.
And beauty grown solely for its own glory: borders of sweet peas, larkspur, peonies, towering delphiniums to fill vases and vases in the Big House. In addition to an orchard of pear, apple and plum trees and, in the greenhouses, apricots, grapes and fig trees, which flourish in the mini-climate behind the walls. But all this is in the past.
In the absence of human hands, the evanescent and eternal atmosphere inspired me and led me to make a fictional walled garden the centerpiece of a novel. Set after World War II, when an exhausted nation struggled to rebuild, the resurrection of the walled garden is a metaphor for that recovery.
It also symbolizes a society then so different from ours today, where we so often “share” our feelings.
In 1946, people certainly weren’t talking about the horrors they might have witnessed or sanctioned. In fact, returning soldiers were advised not to say anything about their experiences.
You kept your secrets inside, the rest of the world firmly outside, the walls of your mind so impenetrable that no one knew what the people of Hell were hiding.
Of course, I’m far from the first person to present a walled garden as a powerful metaphor.
Adam and Eve had Eden (at least for a time) and the smitten lover Solomon, in the Old Testament, wrote ecstatically: “A fenced garden is my sister, my wife.”
The enclosed garden is a recurring feature in medieval art, with the Virgin Mary often depicted within impenetrable walls, the metaphor is obvious.
Chaucer took it up in the Canterbury Tales. His knight is in love with an exquisite maiden who sits within the walls of her chaste and green sanctuary.
Shakespeare also loved to have a secret rendezvous in a garden. But he saw the other side of his story in Richard II’s interpretation, comparing the earth’s problems to “our sea-bordered garden, overgrown with weeds, with its loveliest flowers drowned.” Its fruit trees all overturned, its hedges ruined.
We are all seduced by the peace behind those high walls.
In a National Trust book, historian and presenter of the BBC’s Escape To The Country, Jules Hudson, describes how they “envelop you in a comforting sense of calm”.
He writes: ‘The door that separates the outside world from that within the walls is a magical threshold. Crossing it, you enter a lovely place, an escape from all that is overwhelming in the outside world.’
Exquisite greenery and flower gardens at Kellie Castle in Fife, but these welcoming views are a dying breed
A glimpse into the cozy surroundings of a walled garden in Great Bookham, Surrey
In medieval times, they were built on the grounds of monasteries to provide food for the monks.
The Tudor and Stuart estates had their walled gardens more refined than ever, with box hedges, herbs, fruit trees, a fish pond, a sundial, a rustic pergola and seating.
But it was in the 18th century in Britain that they became a status symbol. Every Georgian grandee had to have one on his estate, its walls higher and longer than his neighbour’s, producing pineapples and other otherwise unobtainable tropical fruits to impress his dinner guests.
In the Victorian era they flourished further, as wealthy industrialists sought to leave their personal mark on the countryside with large houses and all that went with them.
Meanwhile, the expansion of the empire brought home more exotic fruits and vegetables to grow in these unique and hot places.
With the abolition of the glass tax in 1845, greenhouses sprouted as quickly as the plants inside them to occupy up to a third of any walled garden. Boilers, a new invention, provided additional heat.
It was estimated that a one-acre garden could feed 12 people. The average size of a garden was around two acres, although some were much larger.
Queen Victoria’s orchard at Windsor, built in 1844, was 31 acres. But after this heyday came decline and fall.
The world wars of the 20th century were a paradoxical cause. The country needed to be self-sufficient in food, and while walled gardens could feed a family or even a farm, an entire population was beyond its limited resources.
Large farms, increasingly mechanized and industrialized, made walled gardens superfluous. Many were abandoned.
By the 1960s, most had stopped providing food to the house to which they were attached. They were converted into commercial nurseries, Christmas tree farms and orchards, covered with grass or left to rot.
By the late 1980s there were virtually none in operation in Britain, highlighting, says Jules Hudson, how quickly these spaces could disappear if left unattended.
But then came a resurgence. In the 1990s the National Trust launched projects to save our walled garden heritage, starting with the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. With this success, plans were made to bring many of these forgotten spaces back to life.
Countless others, large and small, attached to large and often not so large country houses, a rectory here, a mansion there, are flourishing again, producing produce for the kitchen table (or flowers for the drawing room).
Famous ones include Alnwick Castle, Fulham Palace, Heligan, Luton Hoo, Polesden Lacey, Croxteth Hall, Croome Court and Shugborough Hall in England; Bodysgallen Hall in Wales and Edzell Castle, Dunmore House and Myres Castle in Scotland.
They all have their own unique charm. The turrets of Knightshayes Court, where one almost expects to see some pre-Raphaelite Lady of Shalott looking forward; bees devour flowers in Nymans’ crenellated walled garden; The colossal glasshouses and dovecote of Felbrigg Hall.
And yet, my favorite will always be the walled garden that exists in the imagination. Walk through that closed door and the world can be just as you want it to be, a place of solitude and salvation or anything else you want and dream of, behind those closed walls.
- The Walled Garden by Sarah Hardy. Manila Press.