Part of the walled garden as it is now. Picture by Peter Boam.
GARDENINGIT IS impossible to know with any certainty, but Queen Victoria would probably be quite amused by what has happened to the walled garden at her retreat at Osborne House.
It has been ten years now, almost to the day, for the fruits of gardeners’ labour to mature.
Back in 1999, English Heritage took the decision to restore the garden and picked designer Rupert Golby to transform it in the spirit of what the Queen and her beloved Prince Albert might have liked.
The rejuvenated garden re-opened to the public on July 20, 2000.
The design brief stipulated period plants within a contemporary design, with an emphasis on cut flowers to decorate the house.
In the ten years that have passed, the backbone of that planting remains but with a whole lot of tinkering, after head gardener, Debs Goodenough, who was there at the beginning, and her successor, Toby Beasley, discovered what actually worked and what did not.
That is the nature of gardening. There are good ideas that flourish, those that are confounded by practicalities and those fickle plants which have frustrated and delighted gardeners through the centuries.
Most visitors to Osborne will not know just how far back the walled garden goes — that it is the oldest feature at the great house, built around 1775 by Robert Pope Blatchford.
As with the walled gardens of its day, it was designed to produce a steady supply of vegetables, fruit and some cut flowers for the house when the seasons were king. It was the engine that powered the kitchen.
After the Blatchfords sold up to Victoria and Albert, it became clear that its 'paltry’ one acre was not big enough to supply the much greater needs of a royal household and, with the advent of the railways and money being no object, the 20 acres on the Frogmore estate at Windsor were pressed into action instead.
The train, and not Osborne gardeners, bore the strain of keeping the expanding household fed.
No engraved or photographic and little diary evidence exists as to the use of the walled garden during Victoria’s reign, but it is thought to have been used by Albert as a nursery to bring on the specimen trees that decorate the estate today.
What is known is that it, and its glasshouses, certainly fulfilled Victoria’s need for colour in Osborne in the way of cut flowers, pot plants and palms.
The walled garden became a convalescent refuge after Osborne was given to the nation by Edward VII, but during the latter half of the 20th century its use dwindled until it became used purely to produce bedding plants for the estate and was largely closed to the public.
But, on the back of the BBC’s Victorian Kitchen Garden, that did so much to rekindle interest and fire enthusiasm, its re-birth was planned and it is now at the outdoor heart of any visit.
The garden’s border shape, its hard landscaping and glasshouses were comparatively easy to restore to how they would have been.
The clues were also there as to the fan and espalier fruit trees that graced its brick walls.
The rest was more or less a blank canvas to be filled with a mix of perennials and annuals that were known to be favourites of their day.
"Because there were no records of how the garden used to be we have been left largely to do our own thing, using as a basis Golby’s original design — keeping what works and adapting planting when it doesn’t," said Toby, who landed the dream Osborne job at the age of just 38 a couple of years ago when Debs went off to Prince Charles’s Highgrove Estate.
"We have found the fruit trees have worked really very well," he said.
"Five different historic apples were planted, eight pears, seven plums and gages, cherries, peaches, apricots, nectarines, figs, an orange and a lemon next to the glasshouse.
"The hops have not wanted to be trained along the wires and while the Albert and the Queen apples have played ball in being trained over the structural arches across the paths, the Royal and the other pears have not been so easy.
"They grow upward, but when it comes to the horizontal and going down the other side, they really don’t want to know.
"The lavender either side of the main path looked great — but it drifted to such an extent there was hardly a path left so we have gone for a more compact variety.
"Yarrow makes a striking display and dahlias — White Aster, Tommy Keith and the red Coxinia Palmerii — are looking at their best right now.
"Roses have done well and of the 25 varieties that were planted, there are climbers and shrub roses featuring of course, Reine Victoria," said Toby.
Golby went for a checker-board arrangement and it was quite quickly realised that some things worked, like the dahlias in red and white that produced straight line contrast, while Physalis franchettii, commonly known as the delightful Chinese lanterns, were so invasive there was no way they would stay in line and they started to mount a takeover bid.
More restrained, but flourishing delightfully side by side, are Victoria and Albert rhubarb with some of the longest, stringless, sticks known to the kitchen.
l The walls of the garden bear witness to the rigour with which fruit trees were trained to do their business — they are pock-marked with holes.
On the lower sections there are many more holes because the cheaper rag and nail method of training was employed.
Prince Albert not only had the money to extend the wall height by 6ft but also to buy expensive wire, reducing the need for holes to be punched in the wall.
Citrus trees are not among those that respond to regimented growth and they have done particularly well in the warmth and shelter provided on the south-facing side and they will produce fruit, given a good year.
But, fickle as nature is, there has been the warmth in abundance early this summer for a bumper crop.
• One bonus of returning the garden to its intended use has been for the lucky members of flower arranging clubs who come in at least one weekend a month to use flowers from the garden in displays around the house — just as Victoria demanded.