A change of climate
16/04/2008
Gardening is often a solitary experience, but in my job I do at least get to work with a group of people on some interesting projects.
We are currently helping with the restoration of a walled garden aat Fyne Court in Somerset in conjunction with the Somerset Wildlife Trust. We have allocated to us a section of the walled garden to rescue - and it certainly needs rescuing. We have been digging and weeding, cutting down saplings and clearing for the last eight months and at last are nearing the pleasurable bit of the work: the planning and replanting of the site.
The wall itself has been re -built meticulously and we have been fortunate enough to witness its continuing regeneration; and in the last week a new door has been added - giving the finishing touch to the very beautiful old wall. My colleague, who is a self confessed non-gardener, and whose wife is most bemused that he should be gardening at all, remarked on how it was “less breezy”once inside the walled garden - especially on a day that outside of the wall was quite cold, despite the sun shining.
He was genuinely intrigued when I suggested that this was the purpose of such a space: the wall provides an enclosure giving shelter from winds and the situation on a south facing slope is no accident either as the walls store up the heat radiated from the sun during the day and releases it through the night, creating a more even temperature over this period.
This is called a “micro climate”, and the walls themselves would have provided support over which peaches, vines, and the like would have been trained to form espaliers making the most of the consistent warmth from the walls. The whole space would have provided the big house with its vegetables, fruit and cut flowers all year long. And it was usually within this space that the Orangery would have been built to grow the citrus and vines.
Although most of us do not have the space for our own walled garden we can create a micro-climate to grow plants that we might not have otherwise been able to. We do it all the time on a smaller scale by using cold frames to over-winter plants or even using a heated greenhouse to force seeds to germinate and grow earlier than would otherwise be possible. We provide shelter for germinating seeds by adding mobile cloches and small terraniums. to warm up the soil earlier in the year .
In our own gardens we can easily create smaller sections using wall, hedge or trellis to create an inner garden to give special plants the added protection they require. It doesn’t have to be a complete room with a gate.
A curved wall or hedge away from the house preferably facing south will provide a micro-climate where you can grow more tender palms, or semi exotic fruits.
Olives, figs and many palms can tolerate less than perfect conditions with a little bit of help. Cities where houses and commercial properties are in close proximity to each other, and high stone or brick walls are more common, create a natural micro-climate where a more exotic variety of plant can be grown more successfully than in more open, rural gardens.
Of course if you have no interest in nurturing an environment for exotic or tender plants a walled or hedged inner garden provides a micro-climate where you can “plant” your exotic and tender self on a deckchair with a copy of Mature Times to read!