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

Cherryburn museum viewed from a distance with green grass and summer flowers around it
Cherryburn museum in summer | © Rachel Ladd

Summer in the garden is an explosion of colour and scent

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.

Our gardener is hard at work mowing and maintaining as the garden is in full bloom at this time of year - the whole of the mid-terrace will be a sea of purples, whites and blues this summer.

Our small vegetable bed has been sown with bee friendly wildflower seeds and our new alltoment will be in full swing, with peas, lettuce, courgettes and potatoes to pick!

Last year we sowed seeds for the year ahead, using seeds collected from the Cherryburn garden. Jacob's Ladder, Aquilega, Foxglove, Ox Eye Daisy, Honesty and Verbascum were all sown in early autumn. Large areas of garden are left to allow nettles and thistles to thrive which provides food and shelter for butterflies and moths.

Our gardener uses the 'no dig' method - using a cardboard layer to supress weeds with leaf mulch and compost on top . This feeds the soil without disturbing it and means that chemicals are not needed in those harder to control areas.

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 now has a more 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. 

Work is in progress on the new allotment and the raised beds are at a variety of heights to enable comfortable and accessible garden whether standing or seated.

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. 
 

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

 

Cherryburn - a garden for all seasons

With beautiful blossom in spring, lush greenery in summer, rich colours in autumn, and peaceful, frosted charm in winter, Cherryburn is a garden for all seasons

A close up of summer flowers and a bee with the Cherryburn museum in the background
Summer at Cherryburn | © Rebecca Hetherington

Cherryburn museum in the summer sunshine

A bee sits on a purple summer flower and behind there is a lawn and the Cherryburn museum

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Thomas Bewick's farmhouse and garden at Cherryburn, Northumberland

Discover more at Cherryburn

Find out when Cherryburn is open, how to get here, the things to see and do and more.

A wooden bench sits in front of an old stone building surrounded by greenery. A blackboard next to it says welcome to our silent space
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Silent Space at Cherryburn 

Cherryburn has a designated silent space for quiet reflection in a beautiful green space so visitors can experience the benefits of silence in our garden.