CHAPTER VI 
WALLS 
Plans of the village of Kew, as it was in the latter half of the 
eighteenth century, show that the portion of the gardens near the 
south side of the Green consisted then of a series of 
^ ^ walled-in enclosures running back from the houses. They 
were originally the gardens of these houses. After it 
became the custom of the Royal Family to reside at Kew for a part 
of the year, these properties were gradually acquired by George III. 
The houses were used for his household, and these walled-in gardens 
were added to the Royal demesne. The old garden walls remained 
standing for many years. Several of them were removed by Sir 
William Hooker soon after he became director, and the only ones 
now remaining are a long wall enclosing the Herb Garden on its 
western side, and the walls surrounding the garden of Cambridge 
Cottage. A piece of wall that once belonged to the garden of Methold 
House (now the official residence of the director) still forms part 
of the private Orchid Houses near the T-Range. The mound to the 
west of the same Range, now surmounted by trees and planted with 
a collection of hardy ferns, is held up on the north side by a fragment 
of another of these ancient walls. This mound covers an old ice- 
well, and the wall was part of the boundary of the Botanic Garden 
of 1760. 
It has long been recognised that walls are a very valuable adjunct 
to a garden. They not only give it shelter — and that is a great gain 
— but they render possible the successful cultivation of 
a number of shrubs and small trees which could other- 
wise scarcely be grown and brought to flower. It has for 
centuries been known to gardeners that many fruit trees, when nailed 
to walls, are much more fertile than in the open. A large number 
of foreign shrubs which are so tender that it is hopeless to attempt 
their cultivation under ordinary conditions, succeed admirably against 
198 
Value of 
Walls. 
