A LONG-TERM project to restore a South West National Trust property’s outside area has taken one step closer to completion.

Works to return Kingston Lacy’s Victorian kitchen garden to its former opulence has stepped up a gear with the rehanging of ornamental gates at the entrance to the garden. 

A lavish family home re-imagined as a Venetian Palace in the rural Dorset countryside, Kingston Lacy is set in an estate of 8,500 acres that includes Iron Age hill forts, colourful heathland, water meadows and the world’s oldest pedigree herd of Red Ruby Devon cattle. 

Over centuries, the Bankes family built, altered, embellished and rebuilt the house but it was William John Bankes (d.1855) who created the house that is known today.

The five-acre kitchen garden, which was built in 1876 at a cost of £2,740 —about £180,000 today — was once a horticultural jewel that supplied the Bankes family and Kingston Lacy estate with fruit, vegetables and flowers. It fell into disrepair in the 1960s and was completely overgrown when the National Trust acquired Kingston Lacy in 1982.  

The project to restore the garden began in 2018 with the restoration of one wing of the vinery — two other wings were beyond repair and had to be demolished. Historic path networks were reinstated, flower borders dug and two thatched summer houses, where the Bankes family would take tea in the summer, restored. 

Work was disrupted for two years during the recent pandemic, but the past year has seen a series of initiatives completed that bring the garden to life.

 In 2022 melons were grown for the first time in 40 years and peaches flourished alongside the original vines.  

A 100-metre arch was installed and surrounded by a newly-planted orchard of apples and pears that will provide blossom and fruit for future generations.