The Cherryburn Garden – a place for nature and people to thrive

A Garden For All

The garden space at Cherryburn is an accessible space with seating, wheelchair-friendly and pushchair-friendly paths, ready to welcome you.

In autumn our Cherry tree leaves turn the burnished reds and orange of the season. Our gardeners are busy turning our compost, doing 'chop and drop' on some of our perennials. This means cutting back the perennials and leaving the cuttings on the surface of the soil in order to enrich the soil and provide good habitat for bugs.

Our gardeners are sowing wild flowers seeds at this time of year, ready to bloom in the spring. Expect to see Wild Chicory, Ox Eye Daisies, Phacelia and Wild Carrot.

Look out for mushrooms popping up in the stumpery as well the resident bugs who have made it their home.

In autumn our apples are in abundance,, we believe one varierty to be Golden Pippin, the same variety of apple tree that Thomas Bewick grew in his garden at the Forth in Newcastle Upon Tyne. This apple is excellent for stewing so do ask to take some home for your next crumble.

The garden is designed to support wildlife and to remain characteristic of the natural landscape as Thomas Bewick would have experienced it. In fact, the key ‘rules’ for the garden are that all the plants must be recognisable to Bewick and/or that they will encourage wildlife to thrive. 

The space has a natural look and a wilder feel, with easy to source plants to inspire you to create your own planting schemes at home.

The garden celebrates the legacy of Thomas Bewick with features and designs inspired by him and his work, ready to delight many more generations of visitors.   

 

Going Forward 

By reimagining the garden at Cherryburn, our hope is that the space is now accessible to more visitors – including wildlife – and that the changes ensure it remains sustainable for the future. 

Our aim is to let the garden progress naturally – next year’s garden will be different to this year’s as it continues to mature and is nurtured by the new gardener and volunteers – so it will be wonderful to see the garden change and flourish across time. Next steps include the planting of trees and plants for pollinators. 

Bewick used a woodblock print of his own thumbprint as a mark of authenticity in many of his publications, together with the handwritten inscription ‘Thomas Bewick his Mark.’ We are fundraising to produce a large-scale reproduction of Bewick’s thumbprint and inscription, in mosaic form. Visitors could choose to walk on the mosaic barefoot, which, with accompanying planting, would create a sensory garden experience. We are also fundraising for a bird hide, inspired by Bewick’s knowledge of birds, which he illustrated extensively in ‘British Birds.’ The hide brings Bewick’s work into the garden, extending the museum into the outdoor space and enabling visitors to ‘notice nature’ through Bewick’s eyes. The hide won’t be set up as a silent space to spot rare birds in the traditional sense, but a place to see common birds and draw, paint or photograph them. 
 

Please do share your photos of the garden from your visits, we’d love to see them and hear what you thought about this new space. Follow us or tag us on Facebook @CherryburnNT or Instagram #hadrianswalltynevalleynt