GARDENING AND KITCHEN GARDENS. The purpose of the kitchen garden is to supply the household to which it belongs with culinary herbs, fruit, and vegetables. There are, however, different types of households, and likewise different kinds of kitchen gardens. This entry deals mostly with the walled kitchen gardens that were created in northern Europe, and in particular in Great Britain, during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries.

Types of Kitchen Garden

The earliest garden of any kind was surely one that supplied its owner with edible and, to a certain extent, medicinal or useful household plants. People created such gardens in prehistoric times and they are still made today, albeit on a small scale and with fewer medicinal or household plants.

A productive garden requires certain essential elements that are common to all:...