Townend Garden is a small, domestic garden attached to a typical Lakeland farmhouse. Only the family who lived here for 400 years were not typical yeoman farmers.
Before we wander into the garden, however, cast your eyes across the road…
Townend Bank Barn
That barn you can see was originally built in the late seventeenth century and is still in use today. The oldest part, on the left as you look at it, was constructed in 1666.
It is of a type known as a bank barn. Literally, a barn built on a bank, or slope. This allowed access from the field so the cattle could shelter. This type of barn was common in upland areas (obviously, hills lend themselves to this style!) The Townend barn was one of the earliest examples of this type of barn. It showcased the wealth of the Browne family as well as being a practical addition to a working farm.
The later addition to the right is eighteenth century, and included space for a carriage and dog kennels.
It is still a working building so there is not visitor access. but this doesn’t prevent you from admiring the clever use of the land to create an adaptable barn with room to store grain and provide a space for sheep shearing and more.
Townend Garden – George Browne
The current cottage style garden is based on the one laid out in the late nineteenth century / early twentieth century by George Browne. The last of many Georges in the family, he kept garden notes in his diary, including planting schemes, successes and failures.
His garden was an ornamental edible garden, filled with herbs, flowers, fruit and vegetables. There was an orchard on the slope above the house with apples, plums and damsons. I love the snippet that in 1909 he planted out, all in alphabetical order, 28 varieties of scented phlox.
Other traditional cottage garden flowers he loved were sweet peas. And they would have climbed up hazel wigwams or obelisks such as the ones used in the garden today. Sweet peas were introduced into Britain around 1700. Seeds were sent to Robert Uvedale, a horticulturist and teacher, from his friend Francisco Cupani, a Franciscan monk. It was this Sicilian garden that was the birthplace of the sweet peas, Lathyrus odoratus, we know and love today.
But the sweet pea flowers grown by George Browne were the hybridized varieties developed by Henry Eckford, that became the sweet pea sensations of the late nineteenth century.
Whilst you can’t grow a George Browne sweet pea, you can grow Sweet Pea ‘Robert Uvedale’ which is a rich pink colour.
George Browne won prizes for his pansies in local shows and quite naturally had a fine display in his own garden. Often maligned as merely ‘winter bedding plants’, pansies, members of the Viola family, are fascinating flowers, many of them scented. They were another popular flower of his time and Viola oderata was a traditional Victorian Valentine’s Day gift.
Elizabeth Birkett-Browne’s ‘Commonplace Book’
Elizabeth Birkett married Ben Browne in 1700 and her ‘Commonplace Book’ is a mine of everyday information. It has recipes for meals when entertaining, but for our purposes here, also includes herbal remedies. Many of these herbs would have been grown in the garden at Townend, or found locally on the hills and in the valleys around Troutbeck. The more exotic herbs and spices such as cloves were bought from a chapman (a traveling merchant) or even bought in one of the nearer market towns when visiting there.
The current gardener at Townend has added slate crib sheets, so we can discover what Elizabeth would have used the herb for.
For example, Filipendula umaria, Meadowseet, was used to cure the colic. A stomach upset. The root was ground in to a powder and drunk in a tankard of ale. Whereas Sage, Salvia officinalis, had many uses from a form of toothpaste to curing respiratory problems.
Other herbs in the garden include Evening Primrose, Oenethera, which was used as a cure for arthritis, among other ailments. You may even take evening primrose oil yourself for that!
Townend Garden
This is a homely garden, and one it is easy to imagine pottering around in. Because, lets face it, much as we might love those 30 foot long herbaceous borders and be inspired by them, we probably don’t imagine weeding them in our jim-jams early in the morning!
Not all the cottage garden flowers may not all be the same varieties that George Browne grew, due not least to some becoming extinct. But there would have been, for example, cosmos of some sort. This is another of those flowers we think of as ‘modern’ when they were actually introduced into Britain in the 1700s.
A small kitchen garden plot is hedged with another herb – Thyme. And when I visited, some of the onions had been let to go to seed. The stalks and seedheads laid on the soil to dry and then the seed would be collected and sown in the autumn to provide the following year’s crop of onions for the kitchen.
When you visit, be sure to look up at the outbuilding roof. The guttering along the eaves is wooden, not metal or plastic. And take time to look across the lane for a view of the bank barn, framed by the cottage garden plants.
Visiting Townend
At the time of writing, the garden has limited opening with pre-booking. If you’re in the area, do find an opportunity to visit and enjoy the Townend garden, which is owned and run by the National Trust. I’ll be writing about the delights inside the house in another blog.
You could park in the small car park and take the high path, giving you a vista across the garden to the bank barn. And the chance to admire the traditional Lakeland circular chimney pots gleaming white in the sunshine.
Or you could approach from the lane, through the quirky garden gate and up the path to the courtyard. Having first admired the barn at close hand, of course.
There are suggestions for other Northwest England Gardens to visit below. And if you would like a cottage garden style garden design, do please get in touch with Plews. These ornamental edible gardens are probably our favourites to create, offering the opportunity to be informal as here, but also formal. It’s the bit about them being pretty to look at, delicious to smell but you can eat them (well, some of them) that really makes them a practical choice.
Related Gardening articles you may enjoy from our Award Winning Blog
What is an Ornamental Edible Garden?
Herb Gardens
Herb Garden Ideas
Thyme for a Herb Garden
5 Herbs for your BBQ
Northwest England Gardens to Visit
Stumpery Garden, Sizergh Castle
Holehird Gardens
Acorn Bank Garden
Topiary Garden at Levens Hall
