Kitchen garden

The traditional kitchen garden, vegetable garden, also known as a potager (from the French jardin potager) or in Scotland a kailyaird, is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden – the ornamental plants and lawn areas – used for growing edible plants, especially historically. In large country houses, the kitchen garden was a segregated area, normally rectangular and enclosed by a wall or hedge.

Domestic vegetable gardens provide a small-scale source of food. These were common during the world wars and have been grown to pursue sustainability. Herbs are also produced to flavour dishes and for medicinal purposes.

Form

In large country house gardens, walls served to hide the kitchen garden, as "a place of base labour ... from the more polite areas", which included the often very extensive fruit gardens and orchards. The gardeners were often, depending on the season, the number of guests, and the whim of the owner, expected to keep out of the main "best garden" during the fairly predictable parts of the day when the family and guests were likely to be walking in the garden, and the kitchen garden provided somewhere for them to occupy themselves at these times. Mostly, visitors were probably not expected to venture inside without leave. But some owners, from Louis XIV downwards, liked to show guests the kitchen garden, especially if they knew they had an interest.