Latest news with #walledgarden
The Guardian
3 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Country diary: A paradise inside four walls
Any garden is a special thing, but a walled garden? That's something truly special: an outside that is an inside. When Tara Fraser and Nigel Jones first came to view this semi-derelict Regency house in 2016, they had no idea Ashley Court included a walled garden. 'We saw this wooden door and pushed it open – and there it was. Just like The Secret Garden. Total jungle.' Nine summers and countless hours of labour later, and it is transformed. Nigel opens the door; I follow him and have to stop at the threshold as I catch sight of it. The garden is Tardis-like, bigger on the inside somehow, and bounded by high walls – stone on the outside and lined with brick – in a loose squareish shape that undulates with the lift and dip of the land. The veg beds and paths give it the feel of a patchwork coverlet laid over a sleeping giant. 'No self-respecting Victorian kitchen garden would be so ridiculously slopey,' saya Tara. It's one of the reasons why they believe the garden predates the house to before the 1800s. Not only do the high walls act as a physical barrier against deer and rabbits, they retain the heat and shelter the plants from the wind, such that the garden sits in its own microclimate. In winter, the cold air can escape through a rectangular frost window at the lower end (it pours out, apparently, like a white ghost, into the surrounding woodland). Hard to imagine on a day like this, with bees and demoiselles zipping about, buttercups shining, bathed in warm spring sunshine. Beans have begun spiralling their way up bamboo wigwams, gooseberries are as hard as marbles but growing plumper, more translucent every day. Ancient espaliered pear trees reach out to each other with gnarled fingers. Clumps of chives have gone to flower, their purple tufted hairdos like something out of Dr Seuss. Filled with all of these photosynthesisers feasting on the sun, this garden really is paradise. The word itself comes from the Avestan word pairidaēza, meaning walled enclosure. How fitting that the walled garden is both how we imagine heaven, and the very place on earth where that image took root. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
BBC News
12-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Cusworth Hall's Georgian walled garden restored to former glory
A restored 18th Century walled garden is to be re-opened to the public this summer after a regeneration project which has taken nearly 20 Grade I listed Cusworth Hall, near Doncaster, was built between 1740 and 1744, with the garden originally designed for growing food for the house's garden has now been planted with fruit trees and flowers, while a bowling pavilion on the site has also been Shore, parks development and conservation manager, said the project had "involved thousands of hours clearing the area - it was neglected, overgrown, full of council nursery stock trees that had been abandoned". Mr Shore, who said he had worked on the garden alongside his team since 2007, explained: "It took about two or three years to totally clear that area and thousands of hours of work for both my team and park volunteers."The orchard was planted with 50 apple trees, eight pears, some plums and cherries."Twelve of the apple varieties are traditional Yorkshire varieties and they're all bearing lovely fruit now."The fruit from the orchards would be available for families to pick on special days and plans were under way to introduce beehives that would create honey, he year, the park's flower gardens were restored, including gravel paths, box hedging, and colourful herbaceous plants and Shore said: "The planting is in its infancy, but there are already things flowering in there. There's lots to see."The work has been funded by the National Lottery, the government and the council, as well as money raised by Friends of Cusworth Hall Park and the Cusworth Hall Garden Trust. The walled garden will be open to the public for 16 open days over the summer, in a programme which started earlier this month and runs until 26 Shore said: "We used to open once, twice perhaps, every year, not even that sometimes."The flower garden generated more interest, so we opened eight times last year and this year we will open 16 times. "Going forward, hopefully that'll just keep increasing until we can open every week. That's the grand plan."The original Cusworth Hall was an Elizabethan manor in the village of Cusworth that dated back to the 14th the 1740s, William Wrightson built the Cusworth Hall that exists today, creating the walled garden in the location of the original manor building and surrounding land was purchased by Doncaster Rural District Council in 1961 and underwent extensive restoration between 2002 and 2005. Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North
