KITCHEN GARDENS AND ORCHARDS. 



will be found to meet all requirements. It should be understood, however, that this 

 area will not allow of late potatoes nor for any space being given up to orchard trees, 

 espaliers or herbaceous borders, which must be allowed for in addition. 



After aspect and size comes shape, and it cannot be too strongly insisted upon, that Shape. 

 a kitchen garden, in which the primary object is utility, should be planned with a view 

 to obtaining the largest possible cropping area within the least fencing, which means 

 that, so far as possible, the lines of the walls should be straight and at right angles to 

 one another. For the purpose of obtaining ample wall space for fruit trees, a 

 parallelogram is better than a square, in the proportion of, say, one hundred and 

 fifty feet to one hundred in breadth, thus securing additional length of wall with a 

 South aspect. 





KITCHEN 

 GARDEN AT 

 WYCH -CROSS 

 SUSSEX 



Sc*l* Of 



*. 



2 FRflMES 



5 STANDING GROUND 



COT T ACE 



15 BOTHY 



16 WORKMEN'S MESS ROOM.; 



17 OPEN SHED 



18 POTTING SHEO 



19 POTTING SHED 





FIG. 298. 



Sometimes, however, owing to the lines of existing boundaries or the division of 

 the land by drives or estate roads, a regular shape is impossible, and occasionally a 

 kitchen garden may with advantage be of unusual shape, as when it is modelled to 

 fit a site with curved contour lines or other peculiarities. Such conditions often call 

 for great ingenuity on the part of the landscape architect, who, however, feels doubly 

 rewarded by the satisfactory and even strikingly original results which often follow from 

 the solution of special difficulties. 



Care should also be taken to select a position which admits of thorough drainage, Drainage. 

 especially when the site chosen is in a valley or on low-lying land. A serious mistake 

 is often made in selecting a snug, sheltered position in the bottom of a valley, because, 

 in such positions, Spring frosts are most troublesome : not because there are more 

 degrees of frost there than on higher ground there may indeed be less but because 



235 



