Restoration begins at Victorian garden
8 April 2010
A Victorian walled garden in Norfolk is opening to the public for the first time since 2005 this month (April), just as it begins a five-year-long programme to bring it back to life following years of neglect.
Visitors will be able to watch its progress as the transformation of the former kitchen garden at Holkham Hall, in Wells-next-the-Sea, takes place. New head gardener Tim Marshall, who previously oversaw designer Piet Oudolf's re-design of the walled garden at Scampston Hall in Yorkshire, has the task of rescuing the 2.6 ha (6 ½ acre) garden. Central to his plans is the division of the main area into eight large 'rooms', some formal and some informal but all packed with unusual plants and trees.
“I don't want to copy Scampston but the overall look will be similar,” he says. “It will be a plantsperson's garden, but also somewhere that's attractive to families with plenty of seating and interactive wildlife areas for kids.”
Part of the garden will be returned to its original role as a vegetable and cutting garden, and the first job has been to restore the major structures. With the help of a grant from English Heritage, the three largest of six dilapidated glasshouses have been cleared, repaired and re-painted, including a vinery which has now been planted with grapevines, peaches and nectarines. Tim has also enlisted horticultural students from Writtle College in Essex and nearby Easton College to help him: their first job was to prune an avenue of espaliered pear-trees, among the few original plants to survive and thought to date back over 200 years.
Holkham Hall garden is open from 12-4pm from April to October.