An English Farmhouse Garden
I’ve wanted for some time to put on record what was typically grown in an English farmhouse garden in the 1950s and 1960s. The one I am describing is the one I grew up with. But both in layout and in the range of fruits and vegetables, it was typical of many others I knew both in the family and among neighbors.
The main vegetable plot was to the west of the house. It was, I would guess about 20 or 25 feet by about 60 feet. The two narrow ends (parallel to the house) were anchored by the perennial vegetables, the middle stretch had neat rows that varied according to the season (March and April were drear with little left).
Asparagus
Savoy cabbage, white cabbage, purple sprouting, cauliflower, brussels sprouts
Runner beans (so gorgeous, climbing their poles with their red flowers)
Haricot beans
Broad beans
Carrots (never did well)
Peas
Spring onions
Potatoes for new potatoes (so pearly when forked up, so creamy, not just little old potatoes)
Radishes
Leaf lettuce, cos lettuce
Jerusalem artichokes
Rhubarb
On one side of this were five espaliered apple trees of different varieties for different purposes, cookers, keepers, eaters.
Then came the flower bed (close to the house) and at the bottom, the strawberries and the raspberries.
Espaliered on the front (south wall) of the house was a pear and a green gage, on the west wall an apricot and a fig, and on the garden wall, another pear and grapes. A few figs ripened, the rest made green fig jam.
Outside the back kitchen door was the herb bed: parsley (never lasted past Christmas), various thymes, marjoram, rosemary, fennel, sage, lavender, chives.
Around the vegetable beds were blackcurrants and gooseberries, outside the front kitchen door redcurrants and white currants against the farmyard wall, in the lawn was a mulberry and a filbert (I wanted a whole nut walk like my aunt).
Through the garden gate in the orchard were damsons and cider apples trees (in some disarray) and a walnut that sulked.
From a small part of one of the fields came potatoes for the rest of the year and swedes (rutabagas). From the kale for the dairy in winter came, well, kale tops. From the hedges came elderberries, blackberries, more nuts, and marginal nibbles–hips, haws, sloes for gin, leaves to nibble on in the spring.
Occasionally my mother bought vegetables: watercress from the watercress beds in the next village, cucumber and tomatoes in the summer from the greenhouses at the Manor in the village a mile away.
We usually had oranges in the house and sometimes bananas. 50 lbs of seville oranges turned up every February to be made into marmalade for the year.
No canned fruit or vegetables (except our own). Frozen peas appeared in the early 1960s.
Did my mother like gardening? No. Did she have help? A man from the village came in one day a week to do the heavy digging.
this is really interesting
most people would say britian does not have a cuisine, but if hard pressed, the british can think up of some good british meals to make with food items that they did actually bother producing themselves once.
i recently found an interesting post on the british top 100 food items, which shows that when they are reminded, the british can eat well and creatively
(the british top 100 is a meme, and is found in various people’s blogs – i read about it here: http://my2002in1001days.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/the-british-100-even-though-im-greek)
Blimey, I thought that this England only existed when it was populated by talking woodland creatures, not people!
Meat?
Rachel, that garden sounds amazing. But having been a gardener myself) of course a huge amount of work.
The problem with many school gardens is finding people who will do the actual work, consistently. Most seem to LOVE the idea of kids and gardens, but in urban settings when the reality of the amount of work settles after the fairy dust blows, gardens can be very difficult to maintain. I have seen ones that work well, gorgeous examples of school of gardens, but they do take a tremendous amount of work and dedication.
And it’s not just the work. I can get into the myriad of bureaucratic problems that aren’t resolved even after a big initiative is decreed. Then there are all the petty people problems…