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 more seating, wheelchair-friendly and pushchair-friendly paths, ready to welcome you.

The autumn garden at Cherryburn has a peaceful stillness to it. We leave many of the longer grasses untouched, providing essential shelter and warmth for insects, frogs, and toads. When mushrooms appear among the grass, we carefully trim around them to encourage spore dispersal and future growth.

Some of the herbaceous perennials are cut back, with their seeds gently scattered across the beds to support natural regeneration. Soon, our gardener will be be strimming the wildflower section and leaving the seedheads on the ground. This allows time for the seeds to fall and settle, helping ensure a vibrant display next year.

The allotment on the top terrace is still thriving. Once the runner beans have finished, our gardener will plant onions, garlic, and broad beans to overwinter. We’ve brewed a batch of comfrey tea, which will continue to nourish the soil until the colder weather sets in.
It’s worth noting that Bewick wouldn’t have had a garden like this — his connection to nature came through the surrounding fields of his childhood home. At this time of year, as the landscape shifts, we feel a little closer to the kind of scene he might have known.

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 project 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