Explore the garden at Gibside

The Walled Garden gate bordered by apple trees — Summer in the Walled Garden at Gibside | © National Trust Images/Joe Cornish

Experience nature and history together in a landscape garden shaped by wildlife‑rich woodland trails and a lively Walled Garden filled with vibrant blooms, seasonal produce and garden games.

Discover new things to see and do across Gibside’s gardens and woodland as the seasons change. The following areas guide you through each area in more depth, helping you plan your visit and explore the estate your way.

The garden through the seasons

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Volunteers tending the summer borders in Gibside Walled Garden — The Walled Garden borders in summer | © National Trust Images

Early summer

The Walled Garden ripens with strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and blackcurrants. The garden showcases a display of sweet peas, poppies, towering cardoons, and globe thistles filling the borders and vegetable beds. Fragrant white philadelphus blooms in the shrubbery, while hardy geraniums and roses are threaded through the garden. In the meadows, find wildflowers like the selfheal, a plant once believed to have magical properties, making it a staple in folk medicine and a supposed defence against sorcery.

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Pictorial meadow showcasing brightly coloured summer blooms — Pictorial summer meadow bringing colour and pollinators to the garden | © National Trust Images/Tony Blackett

Late summer

As summer progresses, the gardens grow richer, with Penstemons, Scabious, Rudbeckia, and Echinacea adding bursts of colour, while pictorial meadow creates a rainbow of poppies, cosmos, and cornflowers. Orangery hosts fiery blooms of kniphofia and crocosmia, standing against the deep blues of agapanthus and buddleia. The veg borders overflow with courgettes, beans, and beetroot, while the fruit beds ripen with loganberries and gooseberries, and the wider estate flourishes with wild flora like betony, red campion, and wild orchids.

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Sunflowers with a red brick wall in the background. — Sunflowers in the Walled Garden at Gibside. | © Photo Credit * National Trust Images/Tom Carr

Early autumn

Once a thriving Georgian kitchen garden, Gibside’s Walled Garden still brims with autumn produce. Pumpkins in many varieties sit alongside squash, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, sweetcorn, beans, raspberries and plums. A display of sunflowers lifts the borders, while the medlar fruit in the shrubbery remains a rare English sight, long known across Europe for its famously “cheeky” appearance.

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Fly agaric fungi at Emmetts Garden in Kent, with a red domed top spotted with white, and a white stem. — Fungi in the woodland | © National Trust Images/Nick Dougan

Late autumn

The last nasturtiums linger, asters brighten the borders and autumn crocus appear as the days cool. The landscape soon shifts to bronze, the full spectrum of autumn colour making the oak lined Avenue one of the best places for photography, with fallen conkers scattered across the Market Place. Berries follow, from rosehips to the glowing clusters of guelder rose. As temperatures drop, fungi thrive, from puffballs releasing clouds of spores to the unmistakable scent of stinkhorns.

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Snowdrops in garden, Kedleston Hall, Derby — Snowdrop carpet and crocus | © NTI

Late winter

Late winter strips the landscape back to its purest form, revealing Gibside’s symmetry and scale with the evergreens framing vistas. By January and February, snowdrops gather around the Chapel and spill towards the lawn, and early iris begin to bloom. Hazel catkins dangle overhead, winter aconites brighten the ground and the first blossom appears on espalliered apricot trees, a clear sign that spring is on its way.

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Tulips in the Walled Garden at Gibside | © National Trust Images/Tony Blackett

Early spring

Early spring transforms Gibside week by week as new colour unfolds across the gardens and woodland. The last of the daffodils linked to Sarah Hussey Delaval’s romantic story brighten the paths, alongside many new varieties, while scilla, muscari, iris and crocus paint the landscape in blue. In the Orangery, deep orange crown imperials stand out against the cool tones beyond. Seed sowing fills the greenhouses and rhubarb returns to the donation stand. By April, the Walled Garden is wrapped in blossom from apple, apricot, peach, nectarine, pear, plum and acid cherry trees, with blackthorn flowers whitening the hedgerows across the wider estate.

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Bluebells and wild garlic | © National Trust Images/Tony Blackett

Late spring

Late spring is when Gibside reaches full vibrancy. Wild garlic carpets the woodland behind Gibside Hall ruins, while English bluebells, forget me nots and wood sorrel bloom in the glades. Cowslips, oxeye daisies and wild orchids appear on grassy banks, and fungi such as dryads saddle and chicken of the woods thrive in shaded spots. In the Walled Garden, towering alliums, yellow iris and tulips structure the beds and rhubarb is ready for visitors to take home from the donation stand. The season’s harvest brings spinach, mustard leaves, broad beans, purple sprouting broccoli, radishes and mint varieties. Beyond the garden, the golden laburnum arch by the Orangery creates a striking frame for the shrubbery, sweet scented lilac fills the air, and deep purple rhododendrons colour the wider estate.

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A history of the Georgian landscape garden

Gibside is an early example of a Georgian landscape garden, shaped by the natural movement, which shifted design from strict formality to a more organic, flowing style. While features like the tree-lined Avenue retain symmetry, Gibside embraces naturalistic principles, inspired by Stephen Switzer, who championed gardens that blended into the countryside.

This design philosophy was influenced by Whig politics and classical art. Whig politics promoted liberty and progress, while classical art emphasized harmony and proportion. Together, they shaped landscapes that felt open and free, with dramatic viewpoints and balance.

At Gibside, these influences are woven into both architecture and design. The Chapel, by James Paine, showcases Palladian symmetry, while the Column to Liberty stands as a tribute to Whig ideals.

This controlled illusion extends throughout the landscape. Paths wind through a canopy of dense foliage, then break open to reveal sunlight over sweeping vistas. The garden’s rugged charm feels open and wild, yet it’s carefully curated, and trees are clustered to mimic forests. There’s a fascinating irony at play in Georgian landscape gardens, there’s a tension between nature and artistry, it’s nature as a stage, designed to impress rather than exist entirely on its own terms.

Today, the National Trust is working to balance the restoration of these designed landscapes with the needs of nature. Conservation efforts don’t just focus on preserving historical aesthetics, but on creating spaces where wildlife can thrive alongside history. The Octagon Pond, for example, once a defined geometric shape, remains a grand focal point, but is now a biodiverse ecosystem - a haven for newts and pondlife.

key facts

Plant hunter

Mary Eleanor Bowes once commissioned a plant hunter to bring rare species from South Africa to Gibside. Tragically, the plant hunter was never paid because Mary Eleanor was locked away in Gibside Hall, after she was tricked into marriage by Andrew Stoney Robinson.

A kitchen garden

In the Georgian era, many estate gardens cultivated plants for practical use, whether for food, medicine or dye making. Gibside’s Walled Garden was no exception: it functioned as a working kitchen garden, complete with a pond once stocked with fish and hot houses that show evidence of an early vineyard. Everything grown here had a purpose, with fruit and vegetables raised for the household table.

Sustainability

Our gardeners embrace organic methods that support biodiversity and tackle climate change. We reduce our carbon impact and water usage by embracing companion planting, composting and no-dig beds.

The Spiral Galaxy

Through this project, we aim to share an untold piece of Mary Eleanor’s story, echoing the way Georgian gardens reflected the beliefs and ambitions of their owners through design.

At Gibside, the Column to Liberty stands as a powerful statement of George Bowes’ commitment to Whig ideals, so this new spiral galaxy bed is designed by the gardening team to reflect Mary Eleanor’s passion for science. The theme was inspired by the rapid developments in our knowledge of astronomy in the late 18^th century, when Mary Eleanor was a prominent member of the scientific community.

Inspired by the dynamic motion of galaxies, the design not only creates a dramatic visual impact but also encourages movement, within the bed itself and as visitors circulate around it. An immersive feature in the Walled Garden, it invites exploration while weaving science into the landscape, fusing history and beauty together.

Movement will be woven into the spiral galaxy bed through carefully placed plants and evolving patterns. As the seasons shift, new plants will emerge, subtly altering the spiral’s form, while the varying heights, textures, and structures create a natural rhythm that draws the eye. This ever-changing display ensures the garden feels alive, inviting visitors to experience its motion in both space and time.

The design will focus on a white core using geranium, blurring to yellow with inula, phlomis and deschampsia, and then with swirls of brown from actea and pink penstemon. The galaxy will be punctuated with alliums from summer drummer to schubertii and working outwards there’ll be explosions of liatris and blue eryngium.

Every visit helps fund projects like this, shaping the future of the spiral galaxy bed. In time, we hope to collaborate with a local metalworker, paying tribute to Gibside’s industrial heritage. The vision includes planet-topped obelisks and delicate metal stars, placed among the alliums to mirror their celestial forms. Ultimately, we dream of commissioning a Georgian-style metal telescope, inviting visitors to imagine gazing at a distant galaxy from the heart of the garden.