Viewing the Greenhouses

Visitors to the Holkham Walled Garden are always interested in the vast greenhouses that face south along the north wall. This week they became a refuge from the gusting wind. Gradually the plants that have been overwintering there are now being planted out, this week the big tree fern was moved out. 
Christine Hiskey writes in the Spring 2011 Norfolk Gardens Trust Journal  that, 'the massive glass houses that can be seen today on the north wall of the present gardens were built for the 2nd Earl of Leicester in 1872 by Henry Ormson, at a cost of over £1400, and restored in recent years with the help of an English Heritage grant .....For a time, baskets of surplus peaches, nectarines, figs and grapes were sometimes sent by the morning passenger train from Holkham station for sale in the London market that evening."