Walled Gardens are not what they seem

Fact: Most gardeners, if given  the chance, would relish working in a walled garden.
Fact: Most gardeners, believe a walled garden offers a wonderful, protected environment for growing plants.

So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that my walled garden did NOT offer any protection from the weather! Indeed, the opposite was the case! Let me explain. . .

It’s generally acknowledged that the protection afforded by any screen (wall or hedge) extends to a distance roughly equal to twice its height. Since most Victorian garden walls are around 10 feet high, the ‘protection’ afforded by most garden walls is limited to about 20 feet. On that basis, why don’t we see our famously pragmatic Victorian walled gardens just 40ft wide?

Look at it another way. The definitive ‘Victorian Kitchen Garden’ must surely be Queen Victoria’s very own kitchen garden at Windsor Castle. In this case, the walls are just 9ft high. Yet they enclosed a kitchen garden covering 32 acres! Where’s the weather protection in that!

Wind protection is necessary within a walled garden

As someone who gardens inside a walled garden, the biggest single problem I experienced during the development of the garden were the high swirling winds generated by the walls themselves – in complete contrast to the generally accepted viewpoint. Strong winds would blast across the face of the south-facing wall, reach the corner, then turn south to begin what became a highly damaging ‘cyclone’ inside the garden. The problem was SO bad that the first garden ‘feature’ built in the garden was a giant pergola designed to ‘baffle’ the winds. Even then, young shrubs planted in the summer would be blown over before they could properly anchor themselves. Until I hit upon my wigwam idea. . . (see photo). The wigwam protection enabled young shrubs to get a firm foothold during their first winters.

So why did wealthy Victorians spend so much effort and expense to enclose their vegetable gardens if it wasn’t to protect their produce from the weather?

At Winsford Walled Garden there’s a simple clue because the walled gardens are located between the houses of the Land Steward and the Head Gardener. IF you were hungry and had a bag of stolen produce slung over your shoulder these were the last people you wanted to meet on a dark night! The walls were built to secure the exotic produce within.

The above photo highlights just how exposed my initial plantings were, taken during the winter that first prompted me to use my ‘wigwam protection’. Yet even these small shrubs are already taller than any ground-hugging winter vegetables that often populated Victorian kitchen gardens past and present. Today, after 10 years of growth the mixed herbaceous borders that form the backbone of my design are now so well-established that much of the damaging winds now come over the walls and glance-off the shrubbery within.