The Walled garden from Google Maps
Another lockdown escape last week took me to Audley End, near Saffron Walden in Essex. Although the mansion itself is still closed because of Covid restrictions the extensive grounds which were completely redesigned by Capability Brown in the mid 18thc, were open. So too was the walled kitchen garden restored by English Heritage about 20 years ago. This includes two large greenhouse ranges: a vinery dating originally from the 1820s , and a rebuilt Orchard House dating from the early 1850s.
When Anna Pavord, the garden writer visited about ten years ago she wrote that “Nothing makes me feel happier than walking into a kitchen garden, especially a walled one. The real world disappears. Here instead is an ordered, productive microcosm. No climbing garden plant is more beautiful to me than a well- trained espalier pear; no herbaceous border sings more harmoniously than an old-fashioned vegetable border, snug inside its box hedges.”
Even on a chilly April afternoon all that’s still true at Audley End today. 
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