The traditional kitchen garden also known as a potager in french jardin potager or in scotland a kailyaird is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden the ornamental plants and lawn areas.
Kitchen garden history. Facts to know the great joseph paxton who in 1851 designed the huge glass building known as the crystal palace was first the head gardener to the sixth duke of devonshire at chatsworth. The earliest english gardens that we know of were planted by the roman conquerors of britain in the 1st century ad. By 1944 an estimated 20 million victory gardens produced roughly 8 million tons of food which was the equivalent of more than 40. After a period of being passé kitchen gardens are in again albeit not exactly as they were grown in the 17th or 18th century.
A kitchen garden doesn t have to be right outside the kitchen door but the closer it is the better. The easier it is for you to get into the garden the more likely it. The history of kitchen gardens can actually be traced even farther back than the colonial era back into the middle ages when a kitchen garden was necessary to feed castle denizens and possibly even farther into history. As gardens were the domain of women settlers chose to plant them very close to the house.
The roman gardens that we know the most about are those of the large villas and palaces. They were normally just steps from the kitchen where the woman of the house could instantly have her hands on what she needed throughout the day the site would either be completely flat or slightly raised or pitched to encourage drain off. Beyond a beech hedge at the lower part of the garden is a small orchard. Most vegetable gardens are still miniature versions of old family farm plots but the kitchen garden is different not only in its history but also its design.
In the united kingdom many country houses had walled kitchen gardens which were distinct from decorative gardens. The house is supplied with produce from the kitchen garden and surplus is sold in the stable yard and farm shop. Think about it this way. All manner of fruit salad cut flowers and vegetables are grown here including mummy peas allegedly grown from peas discovered in tutankhamun s tomb in 1922.
One acre of a kitchen garden was expected to provide enough produce to feed twelve people and these gardens ranged in size from one acre up to twenty or thirty acres depending on the size of the household.