Recreating East Dean’s Georgian walled garden

In the heart of East Dean’s historic village lies a walled garden. Built in the latter half of the 18th Century, the garden would have provided fruit and vegetables for Mr Dipperay and his family. After falling out of use sometime during the 1900s, the garden grew wild and unkempt.

And so it stayed until 2011, when work began to restore the garden to its former glory and to build three new holiday cottages within the flint walls. After a great deal of careful planning and hard work the garden is nearing completion, with the first wave of planting taking place in late November.

A working garden

Under the stewardship of head gardener Mark Proctor, the walled garden is designed to entertain and delight while earning its keep as a kitchen garden, supplying food to the Tiger Inn and perhaps a few hops to the Beachy Head Brewery.
The garden’s design adheres to the original Georgian layout, divided into quarters by gravelled paths with a fountain in the centre. The garden will be bordered with box hedges and planted with traditional varieties of fruit and vegetable. Crops will be rotated to prevent leeching the soil of minerals and a cutting garden will provide flowers for cottage guests and visitors to the Tiger Inn.