REAPING THE REWARDS
By the late 20th century, country house walled gardens were in decline, due partly to the loss of the old gardeners who had so skilfully tended them. The resurgence of interest in those skills owes much to the popular BBC TV series The Victorian Kitchen Garden, first shown in 1987, led by head gardener Harry Dodson. What followed was a wave of walled garden restorations across Britain.
One such walled garden is at the handsome Georgian Salle Park in north Norfolk. Salle (pronounced ‘Saul’) has been in the ownership of the White family since the 1890s, but when Sir John White inherited the 4,200 acre estate some 40 years ago, he, along with his estate manager, Paul Hovesen, first needed to make the arable farm sustainable as well as
