The restoration of the Walled Garden at Wollaton Park (known as the Wollaton Walled Garden Project or WWGP) is a community-led collaboration between Wollaton Historical & Conservation Society (WHaCS) and Friends of Wollaton Park (FoWP), guided and supported by Nottingham City Council (NCC) park management and staff. The project will be ongoing for many years.

We should like to recognise the late Alan Gardner, who originally brought this project to the Committee’s attention in 2012. WHaCS originally started the project to restore and reopen the Walled Garden and they were joined by the newly formed FoWP and volunteers from the community.

More information on the Wollaton Walled Garden Project can be found at: friendsofwollatonpark.org.uk/walled-garden

The Walled Garden was built between 1783 and 1788 and it is more likely than not that the Head Gardener’s Cottage and large conservatory (no longer present, but the foundations are located close to the cottage) were built at the same time. They are both fine examples of gothic architecture with their pointed arched windows.

The term cottage is really a misnomer as this house has a kitchen and two large reception rooms on the ground floor and three large bedrooms and two smaller rooms (now a lavatory and bathroom) on the first floor. It also has a large cellar and outhouses in its yard. The size of the building clearly indicates the status of the head gardener.

The head gardener was responsible for a staff of approximately ten men who had to maintain not only the Walled Garden, glasshouses and conservatories, but also the formal gardens, sometimes referred to as the Pleasure Gardens, at the rear of the Hall and the Camelia House and the gardens adjoining the stables.

We do not know who the first occupant of the cottage was, but we do know that in 1856 when Fyfe wrote his Rambles Round Nottingham, he referred to being shown “the celebrated kitchen gardens” then “under the able management of Mr. Haythom, senior, who has, for upwards of fifty years, been gardener at Wollaton”, so he may perhaps have been the second occupier of the cottage. He is shown in the 1841 census as the head gardener living there with his wife (both aged 50) and their six children; his two sons being described also as gardeners. One of the sons, George, seems to be his deputy and is referred to by Fyfe as, “Mr. Haythom, junior, a most intelligent and rising horticulturist.”

By 1861 the new head gardener is Henry Gadd (aged 37) living there with his wife, his sister and two small children. Mr Gadd was to preside over the period when the garden reached its high point.

The Walled Garden glasshouses and the conservatory were filled with an enormous variety of exotic plants, valued in 1867 at £997, the equivalent of £200,000 at today’s prices.

Henry Gadd was still head gardener in 1876 when the garden was visited by a reporter from The Journal of Horticulture who was greatly impressed by his work and was told of his achievement in having recently grown a cucumber “to 7 feet”.

(The remains of a Cucumber House was uncovered on clearing the site in 2019; it had been built in 1865. The necessary funds were raised to rebuild it and it was opened in June 2023. You can read more about this in the booklet 'The Reconstruction of a Victorian Cucumber House', which is available to buy on our Publications page.)

In the 1881 census Henry Gadd is now described as “market gardener employing 6 men”. It probably indicates that in the absence of the then Lord Middleton, who was mainly resident in Birdsall, the produce from the gardens was then being sold on the open market. This would also explain why his successor Charles Mee is described in the 1891 census as “florist and fruiterer”. He has a son and two daughters and, indicative of his status, a 16 year old “domestic servant-general” living in the cottage.

Charles Mee has gone by the time of the 1901 census, when a George McLean (aged 52) is living here and is described as “market gardener”. He came from Staffordshire and is living here with his wife, three daughters and two sons. The daughters (aged between 16 and 21) were working as bookkeeper and cashier, perhaps for the business. We have a photograph of him and his family in the garden of the cottage in our album.

In 1903 Frederick Parkes takes over from him and will remain as head gardener for 38 years, even after the Estate is sold by Lord Middeton in 1925. He had considerable experience having worked throughout the country, including Sandringham. He was 32 when he and his wife Rose and daughter Violet (aged 4) moved into the cottage. They subsequently had two further children who sadly died in infancy and then Freda who was born in 1912; it is she who features in several of his photographs. (It was his daughter Freda that you saw earlier, sat outside the Head Gardener's Cottage.)

Frederick Parkes's interest in photography has provided us with an amazing record of the whole Walled Garden complex. At this time domestic buildings and outdoor staff were seldom photographed, but he has left us with a large collection of both. His photographs have been widely published and remain his lasting memorial.

In the 1930s he and his wife moved into a flat in the stable block. When he retired in 1941 (from his then position of park superintendent) they moved to a house in Lenton Abbey, where he remained until he died in 1952.

Following the sale of the Estate the Walled Garden continued to be used for horticulture; it was a nursery and used to grow plants for the parks department of Nottingham City Council. However, the glasshouses were left to fall into decay and in 1990 the Walled Garden as a site was finally closed. Despite being Grade II listed, the garden and infastructure was essentially left to collapse and become overgrown by vegetation.

The Walled Garden now lay abandoned and forgotten until it was 'rediscovered' in 2012. Our incredible story of the garden's restoration really starts from then, with works starting on site in 2018.

A booklet giving the full story of Transforming Wollaton's 'secret' Walled Garden is available to buy on our Publications page.

Guided tours take place every Thursday from late March to late October at 10.30am.

Please visit this link to check dates and to book your place: wollatonhall.org.uk/walled-garden-tours