Water Lane Walled Garden opens in Hawkhurst, Kent

Water Lane Walled Garden, Hawkhurst, Kent

Water Lane Walled Garden opens its gates on 2 July

Water Lane is an idyllic walled garden with a vinery and Victorian glasshouses on the Kent and Sussex borders. A long-term project over many years to come, the site is being sympathetically transformed into a working kitchen garden with vegetable beds, cut flowers, restored vinery, outside spaces and a pavilion for dining and events. The restaurant at Water Lane opens on 2 July, alongside select garden plants for sale and a small shop.

Down a pretty, hedgerow-lined lane full of cow parsley, ox-eye daisies and buttercups and with long vistas across the High Weald of Kent, is Water Lane. Step through the large wooden gates to the hidden walled garden, an historical horticultural masterpiece with Grade II Victorian glasshouses dating back to the 1800s, including a Melon House, Cucumber House, Pelargonium House and Peach Case and a Vinery, on what was once the Tongswood Estate.

Water Lane is an ongoing restoration project in the hands of new custodians Nick Selby and Ian James who bring with them a wealth of food and horticultural passion from their previous business, Melrose and Morgan, a grocery store and kitchen with shops in London’s Primrose Hill and Hampstead. In collaboration with many partners, notably East Sussex based architectural company, RX Architects, the project has a ten-year timeline to restore the site to its full capacity as a productive walled garden with 13 Victorian glasshouses and 72 no-dig beds, measuring over 650 metres, growing vegetables, fruit, herbs to provide for the garden restaurant and cut flowers for sale, including Larkspur, Dahlias, Sweet Peas, Nigella, Honesty, Cosmos, Zinnia and Cerinthe.

The site of the old poly tunnel in the garden has been transformed into a beautiful terrace with tented stretch awning, open kitchen, wood-fired oven and tables and chairs from British company Very Good & Proper’s new outdoor sustainable furniture range. Every table has open views out on to the glasshouses, long flower borders and vegetable and cut flower beds.

When Nick and Ian set up Melrose and Morgan in 2004 their intent was to champion the local, the artisan and the small-scale. They were as passionate then as they are now and are delighted to be championing the diverse and brilliant food and drink producers in the High Weald and bringing their produce to the table.

The menu at Water Lane reflects its sense of place in the English countryside. The short and ever-changing menu by head chef Jed Wrobel is guided by the seasons with British produce-led cooking that is simple and elegant but prepared with imagination and care. The menu focuses primarily on vegetables either grown in The Walled Garden’s own no-dig beds or from nearby organic and biodynamic farms. The menu will also include small amounts of grass-fed meat and day boat fish from nearby Hastings and Rye.

Sample menu highlights include overnight oats, apricots, cherry compote; kedgeree; melon, plum, cherry and mint on the breakfast menu and for lunch, flat bread with potato, cherry and Winnie’s Wheel; pearl barley stuffed peppers and green sauce; wood-fire baked plaice with fennel and olives; lamb and feta meatballs with milk and chard and for pudding, cherry and almond tart or poached peach with bay custard and crumbs.

The wine list is supplied by Keeling Andrew and Co, the merchant arm of Noble Rot, and includes wines from nearby Kent and East Sussex vineyards Tillingham and Westwell, amongst a list of classic options and more interesting and unusual wines. The aperitif menu will change with the seasons and will include the Water Lane Bicyclette, Elderflower Sour, local gin-based cocktails and Vermouths.

A productive garden

The Walled Garden at Water Lane is an on-going project and a labour of love and will take many years to fully restore. The Peach Case and Vinery will be restored while fruit trees, such as apples, pears, quince and fig will be planted and grown ‘espalier’ along the red brick walls. Four of the glasshouses have already been restored in 2017/2018, due to a generous benefactor, the granddaughter of the original head gardener, Ernest Hardcastle. The second and smallest of the four is the Cucumber House. It has raised brick beds and the remains of the original hot water pipes that heated them. For the last few years’, these beds have been boarded over, but now the team are uncovering them and planning their future use. Beneath the boards the team found 18 inches of compacted soil and underneath that a layer of ‘clinker’, a by-product of the boiler that heated the water for the garden and helped create a warm bed for the plants to flourish. The glasshouse is once again being used to grow cucumbers as well as tomatoes, aubergines and other salad crops that will suit the warm conditions.

The Walled Garden holds many aspects of note and will delight both amateur and serious gardeners. In the height of Summer, the focus of floral activity is the incredible Melon House Border that runs nearly 30m long and is 3m deep. The star of the show each Spring is the Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii, with its chartreuse-green heads that provides colour and structure throughout the bed and has also, delightfully, self-seeded around the rest of the garden. The acid-green of the Euphorbia is perfectly offset by the deep red and purple of Berberis thunbergii Rose Glow and Physocarpus Diablo with its tiny pink flowers, Aquilegia Ruby Port, Geum’s Totally Tangerine and Marmalade, and the swaying purple pom-pom colour pops from the Allium cristophii.

A programme of courses and events at Water Lane will be announced shortly.

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Water Lane Walled Garden
Water Lane, Hawkhurst, Kent, TN18 5DH
Instagram: @water.lane
www.waterlanet