The kitchen garden's history at Cliveden
The walls around the one-acre site were built in the 1890s for Lord Astor, with the kitchen garden laid out by Head Gardener, AB Wadds. By the early 1900s, the northern half of the garden was filled with glasshouses to provide a year-round supply of exotic fruit and flowers.
In the 1960s, the garden became redundant when the Astors left Cliveden. Later, we converted it into a car park.
The return of the fruit trees
The area continues to be our main car park, so we've only reinstated fruit trees against the walls. New borders around the Walled Garden have been made by replacing wooden sleepers with a sandstone kerb. Box hedging has also been planted as a low hedge at the border front.
What are we growing?
A wide variety of fruits have been planted. In the coming years they'll be trained with the help of wires fixed to the wall. Along the south-facing wall there are 12 varieties of apple and on the east-facing wall we've planted pear.
Soft fruits were also grown here, so along the north-facing wall we planted gooseberries, cherries, and black and red currants. We've chosen varieties grown here previously or in the local area, including apple Norton Wonder and pear Improved Fertility.
Why not take a walk around the Walled Garden to find out what we're growing?
