I was a bit down on visiting the Victorian Gardens at the Kylemore Abbey. It was a bit far from the Abbey– far enough that they offered a shuttle bus– but not so far that we wanted to wait for the shuttle bus, so we started walking. However, I am so glad we went because it ended up being a major highlight of the visit. While there wasn’t so much to see at the Abbey itself, there was lots to look at it in the Victorian Garden.
Back in Victorian times, gardens were divided into two parts– the formal, well-manicured garden you’re probably thinking of, and the kitchen garden.
I learned during the course of our visit that Victorian Gardens are kind of a thing— many of them have common elements throughout. For instance, building walls around the gardens was more because the red bricks absorb heat during the day and continue to warm the garden over night. Fruit trees were planted close to the walls in order to benefit from the extra warmth. And this is a “ribbon bed,” common in Victorian and English gardens:
When it was run as a private household, the gardens were maintained by a team of 40 gardeners. That’s forty, 4-0. The gardens fell into a state of disrepair and were laboriously restored by the nuns with as much fidelity to the original garden and its contents as possible. If you were the head gardener, you got this sweet house:
One of the coolest features were the glasshouses, which were used to grow plants that required warmer or more humid weather. The houses could be warmed in the winter by pumping hot water through a system of pipes laid in the ground and low around the perimeter walls:
Here is the kitchen garden– I know we should be glad that we can walk into a grocery store and basically get whatever we want whenever we want…but I have to admit there is a part of me that finds the idea of a kitchen garden brimming with fruits, vegetables, and herbs, as very romantic. I’d be in tune with nature and learn how to preserve summer and fall vegetables to get us through the winter. I’d love to have a kitchen garden some day, but I’d have to learn not to murder every plant that comes into the house first. Plus there’s that pesky little problem of having the time to care for a garden.
So much rhubarb. Rhubarb is a very under-appreciated fruit (?) (Ok, I just checked Wikipedia and it is apparently not a fruit. I also learned in the 19th century it was called a “pie plant”– so funny, because pie and cocktails are basically all I think of when I think of rhubarb. I guess not much has changed in 150 years.)
I will let the rest of the pictures speak for themselves— just take a moment to remember that all of these flowers are in the same place, at the same time!
