The desire for a walled garden is natural enough: a securely enclosed, cultivated space keeps out larger earthbound herbivores and enables a microclimate for detailed cultivation. Historically, walled gardens have been a vital component of a country estate for supplying produce to the big house. Yet even as a rational idea, it’s an unusual thing to pine for—especially in the middle of miles of agrarian farmland north of Chicago.
After spending time in England, the younger members of a midwestern family decided to give it a go as part of a land and water restoration program on one part of the family farm. For guidance, they enlisted Practice Landscape. Principal Rosetta Elkin (who is Academic Director of Landscape Architecture master’s program at Pratt Institute) tells us how the future walled garden was already hiding in plain sight.
Photography courtesy of Practice Landscape.
The family are natural growers and wanted to create a cutting garden that would not be decimated by deer. While considering how to build a walled garden, Rosetta recalls trying to square the environmental and financial cost of removing tons of material and building something new that would introduce new masonry and a concrete footing. “We kept staring at the pole barn…and we thought—we have walls. Once we cost it out, it was so easy, it was a done deal. It was so cheap and and effective, and it still holds the vernacular and footprint of the place.” The roof was removed and a garden was born.
The great thing is that the Croft Garden looks right; it is not an expensive alien concept dropped into the scenery. The barn’s 12 trusses were put to use on another structure, and the walls were reduced to six and a half feet, and painted black. A gabled end remains for shelter from the uninterrupted winds in this flat landscape. It’s food for thought: “There have been a lot of fun conversations around it,” says Rosetta. “Everyone in that region who is storing equipment over winter has a pole barn.”
Under the compaction of the 180-foot by 60-foot site, the soil composition was encouraging. Layers of gravel, sand and clay loam were remixed with compost to a depth of three feet. It was then micro-graded for drainage away from the seating and walking areas.
Included in the cutting garden are Alchemilla mollis, Allium ‘Serendipity’, Aster ‘October Skies’, and Sedum ‘Coral Carpet’. Behind the lower mounds are taller stems of red Penstemon ‘Pocahontas’ and silvery plumes of Hystrix patula.
The family “love growing” in Rosetta’s words, and they wanted to use their protected, regenerated space as a cutting garden. “They want people to take home armfuls of cut flowers after visiting.”
The Croft Garden is a mix of species natives, native cultivars, and “garden classics,” all sourced within a 75-mile radius. It’s planted for a successional display and is a contained burst of color within the wider, mixed topography of fields and wetlands.
Besides taking farm land out of intense, annual-crop production, the nitrogen-rich runoff “pond” was dredged and re-planted as a water retention pond. Small barns and a not over-large family home are going up on these 33 acres, to be enjoyed by the younger members of the family, who have farmed the land for 250 years.
Where there is wetland, there is Army Corps regulation, which stipulates using glyphosate to kill off the European cool grass species. Practice Landscape took issue with this and tried a different approach. “We have a no-chemical ethic; it’s what we do on all of our projects,” says Rosetta. With their clients’ blessing they chose the slow way. “You have to know when it’s the right moment to burn. And pull two days out for that, and remove the cloth. We like to pull it up so we can use it again; it’s a lot of time and effort that most farmers don’t have the luxury of.” This more nuanced approach is only possible when the land is not required to earn its living as its first imperative.
In an example of forward-thinking generosity which must make these the most valuable of clients, the family made some important decisions early in the process. “They decided that they really didn’t want to build a big house. They wanted to spend it on the landscape,” says Rosetta. “They see their role in the family as shifting to the next wave of stewarding the land. One of the things we’re working on next is perennial agriculture; it’s a longer term project.” Watch this space.
See also:
- Garden Visit: The Careful Restoration of a British Walled Garden (The Story So Far)
- Bayntun Flowers: Florist Polly Nicholson’s Walled Garden in Wiltshire
- Before & After: ‘Delightfully Sculptural Elegance’ in Flora Animalia’s Gravel Garden in Los Angeles
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