Dear Kris,

I thought that you might be interested in the two photos that I attach and which were inspired by your 2015 article on Fruit walls.

Living outside Dunblane in central Scotland, I have long wanted to be able to grow fruits, such as grapes, figs and perhaps peaches, that would not normally be successful here so a lean-to greenhouse seemed the only solution. However, as I would be erecting the greenhouse in an open  field the wall had constructed as well. Some years ago I visited the  walled garden at Meggich Castle, some 50km north-east of here, and saw various old apple and especially pear trees growing in the much neglected walled garden there (I believe that they have started on a scheme to plant new fruit trees from the old stock). However, reproducing such a walled garden, about 100 m square with walls 5 m tall, was an impossible (and impossibly expensive) task, so I looked online and found your article.

I was much taken with the photo in the article of a serpentine wall in the Netherlands, and so decided to copy the idea, and you can see the result in  my photos. The wall is 30 m in length and averages 3 m in height (it has to be stepped because of the slope in the field) and tapers from 40 cm thick at the base to 30 cm at the top. It is made from local stone, a form of red sandstone, some of which I lifted from the field when it was ploughed many years ago, and the rest from an old building in a nearby village. The building was a former smiddy (the Scots term; it is smithy in England) and you can see in the second photo two metal rings embedded in the stone of the nearest column which I believe would have been used to tie up horses when they were having new shoes fitted. I hasten to add that it was two local stonemasons that I employed for the construction, and not me!

I am now waiting for some paving slabs to be laid around the greenhouse and then I need to buy some trees. I already have five apple trees in my garden which usually do quite well though this year late frosts meant only the last two to come into blossom yielded any fruit; plums have not been successful and I have replaced them with pears. I hope that the new wall will provide enough shelter to grow quince and mulberry, amongst others.

I have recently come across others locally who have successfully grown grapes and one with a large conservatory with a vine on the south side and a peach on the north, both some 30 years old. This last I saw in the spring as part of the Scotland’s Gardens Scheme where people open up their gardens to the public, with the entrance fees going to charity. Usually they are just the gardens of the wealthy, but sometimes several residents of a village will all open their small gardens on the one day. https://scotlandsgardens.org/

It is surprising how many walled gardens remain in the UK; they were originally used to grow fruit and vegetables to feed the owners of large houses and their staff, but after the First World War, when staff shortages became common (many having been killed in the war), the gardens often fell into disrepair. However, over the past few years many are being restored and used as intended. This is no doubt helped by the gardening programs on UK TV, especially as some of the presenters have acquired walled gardens themselves from where they present their programs.

Once again, thank you for your article and indeed for your splendid website.

John Sanz

In the UK during World War Two, due to the lack of house cellars it was necessary to develop an effective type of indoor shelter. The Morrison shelter, officially termed Table (Morrison) Indoor Shelter, had a cage-like construction beneath it, and was designed to be able to withstand the upper floor falling, of a typical two story-house undergoing a partial collapse.

The Morrison shelter was designed by John Baker and named after Herbert Morrison, the Minister of Home Security at the time. It was the result of the realisation that due to the lack of house cellars it was necessary to develop an effective type of indoor shelter. The shelters came in assembly kits, to be bolted together inside the home. They had a solid (3 mm) steel plate “table” top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath “mattress”- type floor. Altogether it had 359 parts and had 3 tools supplied with the pack. The shelter was provided free to households whose combined income was less than £400 per year (equivalent to £24,000 in 2018).

It was impractical to produce a design for mass production that could withstand a direct hit, and so it was a matter of selecting a suitable design target that would save lives in many cases of blast damage to bombed houses. Examination of bombed buildings indicated that in many instances, one end wall of a house was sucked or blown out by a nearby blast, and the floor of the first storey pivoted about its other end (supported by a largely intact wall) and killed the inhabitants. The Morrison shelter was designed to absorb this energy by plastic deformation. Its design enabled the family to sleep under the shelter at night or during raids, and to use it as a dining table in the daytime, making it a practical item in the house.

A Morrison shelter containing a dummy, after the house it was in had been destroyed as a test

Half a million Morrison shelters had been distributed by the end of 1941, with a further 100,000 being added in 1943 to prepare the population for the expected German V-1 flying bomb (doodlebug) attacks. In one examination of 44 severely damaged houses it was found that three people had been killed, 13 seriously injured, and 16 slightly injured out of a total of 136 people who had occupied Morrison shelters; thus 120 out of 136 escaped from severely bomb-damaged houses without serious injury. Furthermore, it was discovered that the fatalities had occurred in a house which had suffered a direct hit, and some of the severely injured were in shelters sited incorrectly within the houses.

From Wikipedia. Via Amateur Photographer UK.

You might take them for granted when you see one, but building dry stack stone walls is not for sissies:

“This is the first in a series of tips on building dry stack stone retaining walls for landscaping, gained from my personal experience and particularly aimed at the owner builder. The picture below shows the landscaping dilemma we were confronted with when we purchased the house. The house pad was originally leveled by cutting into the embankment you see below, when the house (just behind the camera) was built some 30 years ago. Since that time the 8’+/- x 100′ cut was basically left to erode on its own and directed rainwater back towards the house.”

This had to be dealt with before any further landscaping could be done, and not being into railroad ties as a solution stone seemed the best choice. We had the first of 3 loads of what ended up being a total of 44 tons of stone delivered from a nearby quarry. In the next post we will take a closer look at the stone and where it came from. Before I go any further I want to stress that this is very hard work and the risk of serious injury is real. One should be in top physical shape and be constantly aware of your surroundings. A large unstable stone could easily break a bone. Hazards of tripping over stone and tools are ever present, and then there is your back. If you have any hesitation don’t attempt this work.

Assembling the Puzzle

As soon as I can I start to spread the pile out and create avenues for access. I didn’t have a lot of area to spread out for this project so I was very limited. The first thing I do in sorting the stone is to create piles of rubble that have no value as face stones and will be used as the hearting – the stone fill hidden in the back of the wall which I use a lot of. The trick here is to have the skill to look at a stone and see if it has a flat face (the part you see in a finished wall) and has enough length to extend into the wall behind that face. This is hard to explain and when we get to the post on actually building the wall we will look at this further, with examples.”

I sort stones by size or shape, creating piles of say flat stones in one place and long rectangles in another. Potential steps that are smooth on the top and thick and heavy are set aside. If I select a stone that I think is what I am looking for but I find it won’t work, I don’t just throw it back, I place it in the appropriate pile. I also am making mental notes of what is where so I can go right to it when I need it. With all the emphasis on sorting, the counterweight to that  is not to pick up or move stone any more than you need to.”

See and read more: Tips on building a dry stack stone wall. There is much more to discover on the Alt. Build Blog.

“Jardín vertical low-tech en Ibiza” by Spanish architects Urbanarbolismo. The garden acts as a sound barrier between a club’s outdoor central courtyard and nearby appartments. The ceramic elements – used as a planting medium – are placed so that irrigation water can easily enter from above. No automated irrigation systems are required. Urbanarbolismo makes use of local plant varieties.

Jardín vertical low-tech en Ibiza. Urbanarbolismo. Also check out their green roofs:

Previously: How to make your own low-tech vertical farm.