West
Dean College fruit garden, Sussex
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West Dean College is located on the edge of the Sussex South
Downs some 8 miles north of Chichester. Many interesting things go on
there including chilli and tomato festivals plus many interesting
courses such as tapestry making, international guitar festival, art exhibitions, workshops on making early music stringed instruments,
gardening, chair making, writing etc, which you can check out on their
web site here.
We went there last year for their apple and pear event, which is 13-14 October this year. They have a marvellous fruit garden within brick
walls of the sort one sees at National Trust maintained stately homes.
Examples of trees trained in uncommon shapes are on display, I had
previously only fruit trees trained like this in the pages of Louis
Lorette's classic book on pruning.
We begin our virtual tour of the west Dean College fruit garden with
the most typical of restricted trained forms of fruit, cordons. These
are pears. Note the flint on the walls, usually it's plain brick.
And a close up. Note the pear in the middle of the picture going off,
there was a hornet eating it.
The
next picture shows the zig-zag path following the contour of the wall,
which is designed to catch the most light and be appealing to view.
On the near left is a pear being trained 'goblet style' to a hooped
metal structure, here are 2 close ups
Very much the sort of thing a wealthy landowner would use to show off.
Here is a simpler pyramid shape pear tree trained in the same way. On
hte wall behind a plum is being trained as a fan, using bamboo canes
which are fixed to the wall. the growing shoots are loosely tied to the
canes as they grow.
Here is a view of a wall trained fig, again a fan. Better crops are
obtained in Britain from hot country fruits like figs, peaches and top
quality pears by growing them against a wall due to the heat and
shelter.
Just to show how many different restricted shapes the skilful gardener
can obtain from wall trained fruit, here is a double-U cordon pear.
And an even trickier cordon shape
All of these old stately home walled gardens would have a greenhouse,
typically containing figs, grapes, perhaps oranges or even pineapples.
Here is the view towards the big lean-to greenhouse at West Dean, and
the contents.
Inside the greenhouse is an enornous fig tree
ANd here Julia admires 2 splendid indoor trained grapes, one white and
one red.
Altogether a most unique fruit garden (fancy name for an orchard with a
little something extra). I would certainly reccommend a visit to West
Dean, if not for their apple and pear event then for the chilli and tomato festivals. For details, check out their web site.
Why not fit a visit to West Dean in with half a day at nearby Chichester, which has excellent pedestrianised shopping centre, the Cathedral and the festival theatre?
return to other people's orchard
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