The term ‘heirloom vegetables’ takes on a whole new meaning when one minute you’re gardening in 17^th century style, not long after potatoes were brought to Britain, and the next working in the garden of a 1948 prefab.  Every day, gardeners at the Museum of Welsh Life near Cardiff have to think themselves back into a gardening time warp:

Museum of Welsh Life near Cardiff

 

This open air museum (http://www.museumwales

.ac.uk/en/stfagans/) is in the grounds of St Fagan’s Castle, a late 16C manor house, and encompasses over 40 original buildings moved from various parts of Wales and re-erected there.  The idea is to show how people have lived, worked and spent their leisure time over the last 500 years. 

Naturally, this includes what they grew and so the gardens around the houses provide a living demonstration of gardening techniques, historically-correct plantings and an insight into the social class of the original inhabitants, from the 16C to the present day.

They try to keep the gardens as authentic as possible, both in style and in varieties of crops grown.  Discovering which varieties were being grown at a time is not always easy and research is continuing all the time – and then it’s a question of sourcing the seed.  They find the HDRA’s Heritage Seed Library a great help – their ‘Crimson Flowered’ broad bean features in several gardens, for example.  The museum also orders many heirloom varieties from Thomas Etty.

Farm kitchen garden - 1610

All vegetables have to be sown direct in the garden (and then thinned out) at Kenixton Farmhouse which was built in 1610 and moved to the museum in 1955 from the Gower peninsula).  Farms in that era were truly self-sufficient and relied on making use of everything at hand to aid their growing; digging-in cow and well as horse manure to improve soil fertility.

The soil would have been warmed for early sowings by making a hot bed with horse manure and straw.

Early, knobbly potatoes are grown here, but of course, in those days the gardeners would not have had to contend with potato blight as this appeared much later, at the time of the Irish potato famine from 1845 – 49.

It is likely that the gardeners at that time would have rotated their crops.

They would have grown parsnips, carrots, leeks, beans, members of the cabbage family, as well as raspberries and rhubarb.

Honey was an important ingredient before sugar became generally available, and there is a bee shelter in the garden.  Skeps, made from coiled straw, were used before the advent of hives as we know them today, and each would contain a swarm of bees.

Miners’ terrace gardens – 1800 – 1985

A small terrace of six iron-ore miners’ cottages built about 1800 in Merthyr Tydfil have been developed to reflect the changes in living and gardening in 50 year stages from 1805, when the whole garden was devoted to growing vegetables, to 1985 when the trend was for more of a leisure garden where children could play.

The original tenants would have double dug the gardens each year.  One of the cottages has a pigeon loft at the bottom and the muck is added to the compost heap to break down as it would be too strong to use raw.

Castle borders come alive again – 1900

St Fagan’s Castle did have a large walled vegetable garden, but for many years it had been simply grassed over, with a mulberry grove being planted nearer the manor house.  But a few years ago it was decided to bring vegetables back to the grounds by turning one of the borders into a kitchen garden.  Peaches were already growing against the wall and so there are mainly low-growing crops such as potatoes, chard and leeks.  Also there are old-fashioned tall peas and a row of runner beans. Cardoons are grown in trenches as they used to be, this makes it much easier to earth up for blanching the stems for eating.  Seakale is forced using clay pots, and globe artichokes are grown.

Plot with no potatoes – 1678

What surprises most visitors to the garden at Abernodwydd farmhouse is the lack of potatoes.  The timber-framed farmhouse was originally built in Powys, mid-Wales, in 1678, a time when potatoes were not grown there.

The beds were edged with box hedging but are now simply separated by beaten earth paths topped with cinders as it is thought to be more authentic.  Research is still on-going.  Now the beds feature a mixture of herbs, such as sorrel and rosemary, cabbages and kales, tall peas and broad beans, as well as onions.

Farm labourers cottage – 1770

If you thought raised beds were a modern invention, think again.  In the garden of Nant Wallter cottage, turf-sided raised beds have been re-created to show how they were used to overcome the problem of shallow soil.

The mud-walled cottage was originally built in about 1770 in Taliaris, Carmarthenshire, where there was very little top soil. 

Crops would have been fairly limited and they would have concentrated on potatoes, onions and collards (or greens), including Good King Henry, as well as herbs which they would have relied on for medicine.

Middle Ages farmers’ fare – 1508

The quite large vegetable garden at Hendre’r-ywydd Uchaf is typical of what the better class of Welsh farmer would have gardened about 1500.  One end of the long single-storey building would have housed cattle, separated from the family by a wall and separate entrance.  The cow muck would have been used on the garden.

It is thought that the beds were edged in wood, but obviously not planed wood, and that the people spread waste on top of one bed at a time, allowing it to build up and then digging it into that bed the following year.

The gardeners have created six beds and now concentrate on growing simple vegetables such as beans, and brassicas including kale, as that is what research suggests is the most authentic for the period.

Vegetables were broadcast sown and not sown in rows as we do today.

There is also a ‘sorcerer’s garden’ of herbs such as wormwood and tansy, which would have been used as a strewing herb on the farm’s floor to help keep the house smelling sweet and to counteract pests such as fleas.  They would also have grown deadly nightshade, which was historically used as a narcotic and to allay cardiac palpitations.
(also see: http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/old-elizabethan-recipes.htm)

War on hunger - 1948

The garden of the 1948 prefab demonstrates how the wartime Dig for Victory campaign was continued into a ‘Digging for the war on hunger’ campaign as food rationing continued until 1953.

Prefabricated bungalows provided large numbers of homes quickly after people were made homeless during the Second World War and it was not considered patriotic to have more than the tiniest lawn – the space was used to grow food.