Looking for ideas for large walled gardens

Probably your first consideration is what do you want to end up with? Decorative or fruit and veg - or both. It looks as though the house opens onto the larger garden so will you need to put in patio/sitting area. Do you have to consider swing sets and trampolines? Do you envisage a traditional walled garden, or is it more a garden with a wall? How high are the walls - the shadows suggest they are not as high as a traditional walled garden walls. What are they constructed from? Attractive brick or stone, or old blocks? Will you want to hide them?

What will you want by way of sheds? I suggest you decide on a fairly big corner - a shady one - where you can have compost heaps, timber piles and all the usual garden junk, and put in a hedge to divide it off and hide it. What are the trees like in the smaller area? If they are not much you might consider thinning them and using that area as your veg garden, traditional walled garden style. You can put some fruit bushes in light shade, raspberries don't mind some shade for example.

Nettles would suggest its decent soil, rushes would suggest its damp, so you may consider whether some drainage is necessary before you start creating a garden.

When you have decided on these basic essentials I would think in terms of planting little groves of trees to break up the area, smallish ones that will suit a damp area, alder, willow, some birches (I think some of them prefer dryer ground, needs a bit of research) and let them break up the area and get established while you work on the rest.

It doesn't always follow that a walled garden is completely sheltered, the solid barrier can create turbulence a distance away from the wall on the inside, some trees along the walls to break the wind might be a good idea.

Some thoughts on places to visit for ideas. Not criticising any that aren’t on my list, this is off the top of my head and there is a wide variety here

Mount Congreve (Waterford)

Glenveagh (Donegal)

Kylemore (Galway)

Fota (Cork)

Lissadell (Sligo)

Colclough (Wexford)

Vandeleur (Clare)

Malahide (Dublin)

Botanic Gardens (Dublin)

Ashtown Castle, Phoenix Park (Dublin)

Kinoth (Darina Allen’s place near Ballymaloe. Not walled but plenty of contrasting ideas)

Many others also worth visiting, dotted around the country. The good ones are worth two or three visits to see them in different seasons.

You mightn’t want to replicate any of these, and mightn’t have the resources to do so. But you’ll get great ideas for beds that you can mix with lawns or shrubberies to create something interesting and manageable.

I'm so jealous I don't know where to start :)

Great advice already given.

Take your time.

I'd plan out areas for greenhouse, patio, shed. Bbq, ponds area plan all services to theses areas.. paths obviously this will depend on style you decide to go for.

Try to have a bigger picture in your mind for the whole garden. Then you can take it in bit size pieces.

It's as big/complicated a project as you want to make it. You've two gardens one could be functional the other extravagant. Best of luck with it.

I thought it was on my list. Excellent suggestion. And apart from everything else worth seeing, they have a great selection of old Irish apples growing as espaliers, though it's on freestanding wire rather than walls. Only problem is that you have to depart and leave that amazing new glasshouse behind.

It sounds beautiful and I for one would be delighted to see updates! I rather think an acre would be a lot to fill with just the traditional fruit and veg set out formally, I would go for creating 'secret' areas - not too fussily divided up as it is restful to look across an open area, but still your winding paths, groups of shrubs and little groves of trees - and pond! - would make a magical place to walk. Congratulations, it looks like a wonderful project!

Get yourself a copy of the old Gardeners Assistant (6 Volumes) by William Watson first published 1859. You can get a decent set of a later revision if you hunt around for about €60. OR you can download it here :-)

Why would you do that? Well it will give you a good idea of how the garden would have been run and planted when it was originally created. Many of the ideas you'll find in the book are perfectly valid today.

btw if the walls are all sound and you can gate it the first thing I'd do keep chickens (safe from fox).

The out houses and sheds might be interesting and you'll probably find some form of green house (lean too?) somewhere as well as cold frames and even forcing pits?

First thing I'd do as you say its got rushes is to look at the drainage. If you read the relevant bits of the Gardeners Assistant you'll notice that the old Victorian gardeners were mad keen on drainage, so it will be there somewhere and well worth sorting out. I've restored the drainage on a couple of walled gardens and with a bit of a feel for the land its not to difficult to find the drain runs. In one walled garden which I'd been told had no drainage because it was on a slope I found it by digging a trench across the lower end of the slope.

I'd love to see you do that. It would be great to have a record of the progress and see your gardens evolve through the seasons and years.

Plenty of time. Ambrose Congreve said (in much less politically correct times) ""To be happy for an hour, have a glass of wine. To be happy for a day, read a book. To be happy for a week, take a wife. To be happy forever, make a garden". Given that he died at 104 on his way to the Chelsea Flower show he probably had some idea of what he was talking about and so I predict that you are going to be very very happy !

Plenty have told me that there is no drainage system but drainage was part and parcel of growing in Victorian times. The whole point of the walled garden is to get extended cropping time. The prevailing thought was that spring rain made the ground colder so you had to get rid of it to warm the soil. The warmer the soil the earlier the crops. Don't forget labour was cheap and the materials ....

Terracotta 2-3, 4 and 6 inch drains would be the norm but I've even seen massive drainage systems in some gardens that were more akin to a mains sewer than a land drain. Ireland certainly had the manufacturing capacity to make the old style drainage although the largest one in the video look like chimney liners.

Box drains would have been a cheaper option you can see a good one here

Its years since I saw it but I remember a table of recommended spacings for lateral drains depending on soil type. Normally you get a herring bone pattern across the slope. With smaller drains running into larger ones. Once you have found one drain you can then make a fairly accurate guess where the next one will be.

Remember this is an old walled garden so the old rules apply. Double digging would have been the order of the day (yearly?) so in most cases except near paths all drains would be laid a minimum of two spits down.

Unfortunately there would have been plenty of labour in a walled garden so while drains would have been well maintained they'd have thought nothing about digging down 4 foot and lifting a few drain sections to get the rods in. Rarely would you find anything like a manhole for an interceptor (main join). I'd still keep my eye open for manholes all the same and broken bit of flagstone that might indicate their existence.

Any streams lower than the site you could look for an outflow?

You missed your chance unfortunately. Last summer was dry were I live and might well have show up some of the drain runs from an Ariel photograph

Bad luck with the photos. Where I used to work in the UK in one garden they had photos of the gardens in the drought on 1975 and even though the drains on the lawns were very deep (4 foot plus) they showed up.

Any other structures, foundations or old iron mongery knocking about. Its surprising what can turn up. Metal work and marks in the wall can give a clue as to what might have been growing there. Peaches sometimes had like a curtain rail on the top of the wall that had a curtain that could be pulled over the blossom on frosty nights or metal struts sticking out that would take pains of glass to slow heat loss and reduce the effect of frost (or both).

Septic tanks are another interesting one. Rarely mentioned anywhere but the main house septic tank was sometimes near the walled garden so barrow loads of the Sh1t could be dug into when double digging - I kid you not.

Is there a bothy? Small barely habitable shed where the younger gardeners would live?

Don't get too hung up on the drains if nothing turn up (unless you really need them reinstated?) they will turn up in due course when you least expect it. I'd certainly be looking carefully at the base of that scrubby hedge line that goes from the middle of the larger areas wall towards the stream.

One serious tip with that garden is WATER TAPS and more WATER TAPS. At the very least run a couple of rolls of half inch standard pipe up the middle of each area and add taps and spurs off it when you find more use for them.

I'm not suggesting the OP put drainage in I'm saying it will already be there. People didn't go to all the lengths of building a walled garden without putting in a lot of drainage.

I just want to make the OP aware thats its there as he said there are rushes suggesting wet areas.

Another reason of making the OP aware of it is so he doesn't get a machine in and end up messing up a perfectly salvageable drainage system. One very sloping site I can think of had no drainage pipes according to the owner but when he got in a digger to dig out for large polytunnel the machine took out tile drains with almost every scoop. Because this was at the bottom of the site that area just about flooded with all the water coming into it so I helped out finding the outflow (there was an obvious pond the other side of the wall) and the now working land drains were reinstated.

The site I used to work at in the UK had several springs on the site and some of the land drains piped water out of the garden. If they got blocked which often happened the cellar of the house would flood. I'm not suggesting the OP's house will flood but its not impossible the wet patches are from water coming from a spring that was drained when the walled garden was built.

There would have been more than one gardener with a walled garden that size. I used to look after a one acre walled garden with about 4 acres of pleasure garden as a full time job. I cultivated about half an acre of the walled garden for veg and hedged the rest off although I eventually used that area for soft fruit (raspberries, black currents, gooseberries etc) and maintained it mainly by keeping the weeds down with grass cuttings (tons of the stuff from the lawns) and a bit of spraying around the plants. With modern machinery that walled garden could easily become a full time job.

highdef really needs to make his plans according to how much time he wants to spend in the garden. Money will be another big factor.

Back to the walls. Any nail patterns in the walls? I used to prefer to set up wires along a wall, wire canes to the wires then attach the plants to the canes but often Hiatt lead headed wall nails were used https://www.flickr.com/photos/arne/20594039693 and the patterns of nail holes in the walls would indicate their use.

I'd just keep mowing it until I had a good idea of future plans.

Ah, give them a chance! Its less than 2 months since first post - come back this time next year!

Ah I wasn’t expecting results. Just interested in following the thought processes and ideas as they evolve.

I doubt it this week have you seen the weather forecast :-(

Fruit orchard as already mentioned and if you want to make veg or flower beds use no dig method. Better for soil and your back :)

https://www.growitbio.com/post/easy-eco-friendly-way-to-start-new-planting-area

If you plant and grow apples/pears/other fruits as oblique (45°) cordons rather than espaliers a wall height of 2meters will suffice. And you will have space for a greater selection of varieties. Just ensure that the root stock is M9 or possibly M26 if the soil is poor.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/fruit/apples/growing-and-training-as-cordons