Glasshouses of the Walled Gardens at Croome Court

The walled garden at Croome Court belongs to the estate of the Earls of Coventry, remodelled in the mid-eighteenth century with Lancelot "Capability" Brown. According to Wikipedia, a kitchen garden existed from the early part of the century; around 1750 George William Coventry, advised by Sanderson Miller, gave its walls their present rhomboid shape, and the enclosure then exceeded seven acres. In Brown's day it received new hothouses for melons, pineapples, peaches and vines. Around 1800 Arthur Young ranked Croome second only to Kew as a botanical showpiece, and the register of parks and gardens adds that glass was an especial feature of the estate.

In 1805 George Tod, whom the garden's website presents as a specialist in glasshouse and vine-house construction, designed a vinery. A heated wall with five furnaces is dated to about 1806 by Wikipedia but to the mid-nineteenth century by the register. In the twentieth century changes of ownership, two world wars and a shortage of skilled gardeners led to neglect, and by the end of the century the glasshouses were derelict.

Chris and Karen Cronin took the garden into their care in 2000 and have funded its restoration privately. It opened to the public in August 2014. Work on the Fig House began in 2002; the Melon House frame was rebuilt in 2004 and its sash windows fitted in 2005; the Tomato House was restored in 2019-2020; an excavation in 2017 uncovered the arches of Tod's vinery; and the Pineapple House was completed in spring 2025.

The walled garden follows a rhomboid plan inherited from the remodelling of its walls around 1750. Figures for its extent vary: the register, as quoted by Parks & Gardens, gives a maximum of 200 m east to west by 150 m north to south, the garden's own website speaks of five acres (about two hectares) for the present garden, and Wikipedia of more than seven acres for the original enclosure. The gardener's cottage stands in the north-west corner. A free-standing heated wall, running east to west, 13 feet (about 4 m) high and fitted with five furnaces, stands slightly off-centre; a central pond has been brought back into use.

The restored glasshouses are timber-framed structures glazed with sash windows made again in traditional joinery; those of the Tomato House, in Sapele hardwood, were made in the garden's own carpentry workshop. Red-brick tunnels run beneath the glasshouses, about 35 metres long for the main one, and once protected the hot-water pipes coming from the boiler house; visitors now reach them by steps from the Fig House. The underground arches uncovered in 2017 mark the site of Tod's vinery.

The Tomato House holds a collection of heritage tomatoes, and the Pineapple House pineapples that have been reintroduced and have been ripening inside since the 2025 restoration. The Fig House and Melon House work once more as growing houses, with modern climate-control systems in the heated glasshouses. The garden has also put heritage apple varieties and historic vegetables back into production; seasonal produce, including heritage apples and tomatoes, is sold at the entrance, and plants and seedlings are available all year.

Around the glasshouses the rose garden gathers more than fifty varieties of scented David Austin roses around a restored eighteenth-century sundial by Robert Adam. The Mediterranean garden is built around two olive trees said to be up to 300 years old; a mosaic garden, a woodland laid out on the estate's former midden and a well that supplies the irrigation complete the picture.

The walled garden is privately owned and opens in partnership with the National Trust: visitors enter through the Croome visitor centre, and the Trust's admission applies in addition to the garden's own. It opens at weekends and on bank holidays from April to September, and a buggy is available from the visitor centre. Some glasshouses have steps. The descent into the tunnels, in a hard hat, starts from the Fig House and may be closed after heavy rain.

The garden also houses a gallery and a pottery. A visit combines naturally with Croome Court itself and with Capability Brown's park, where Robert Adam's Temple Greenhouse, a Grade I listed building quite distinct from the walled garden, stands.