The Victorian Kitchen Garden was a 13-part television series produced in 1987 by Jennifer Davies for BBC2. It recreated a kitchen garden of the Victorian era at Chilton Foliat in Wiltshire, although at the time the series was made Chilton Foliat was in the county of Berkshire. The presenter was the horticultural lecturer, Peter Thoday, the master gardener was Harry Dodson and the director was Keith Sheather.[1]
The theme music was composed by Paul Reade and played by Emma Johnson. It won the 1991 Ivor Novello award for best TV theme music.
The series began in the largely derelict walled garden at Chilton on a freezing January morning and followed Harry and his assistant Alison as they recreated the working kitchen garden.
The work involved many repairs from replanting the Box (Buxus) edging and replacing the gravel walks to reglazing the cold frames and repairing the magnificent Victorian wood-framed, brick-based glass-houses. The team were determined to use plants that the Victorian head gardener would have had available, so there were many hours of scouring old and modern catalogues and many disappointments. However, the required plants were found eventually. The programme displayed the various tools and techniques of Victorian gardening, and this was where Harry came into his own. He had used many of both and therefore could produce many of the tools from various cobwebbed corners of the service buildings and demonstrate how they were used.
The series was successful and spawned three sequels:[2]
Each of the series (except for The Wartime Kitchen and Garden) are commercially available on DVD, distributed by Acorn Media UK.