Last year brought news of the closure of one of the best loved gardens in the north of England. There’s still a chance to see it before it’s gone for good, writes Helen Gazeley.
News of the forthcoming closure of the world-renowned Chesters Walled Garden in Northumberland shocked the gardening world when it was announced last July.
From the moment she knew that her lease was not to be renewed, Susie White, who has devoted the last twenty-three years of her life to the garden, started looking for a new site suitable for transplanting the many thousands of plants which included National Collections of Thymus, Origanum and Sanguisorba.
Situated only twenty-five yards from Hadrian’s Wall, it is on land leased from Chesters House Estate, owned by multi-millionaire race-horse owner Graham Wylie. Wylie took on the lease from the previous owners. It is possible to see the house through wrought-iron gates in the Roman Garden and a spokesman for the estate was reported as saying, “It has always been the intention to keep the estate private.”
It seems a shame that only two months later it became clear that the Chesters House Estate, which has its own wing for dogs, is on the market for £9 million.
I phoned Susie to ask whether the garden might be saved by the next owners, but there is currently no news of who they will be. “I can’t hold off the pulling out on the ‘if’,” she said. Moving to a property nearby, but in a “very different location from the point of view of temperature”, Susie will spend this year creating a new garden with a view to opening for the National Garden Scheme in 2011 and will chart her progress in a series of articles in The English Garden later in the year.
She is taking with her the National Collection of Sanguisorba (burnet) but is giving up her collections of Thymus and Origanum. “They are so specific to the location,” she explained, “and there are other collections in Britain.” (See http://www.thymus.co.uk/ and Iden Croft for origanum.)
Chesters Walled Garden is a sad loss. Its most famous feature is probably the long thyme bank, established in 1987, but other attractions are a Mediterranean border with a thirty-metre long lavender hedge, a Roman Garden with displays of herbs grown by the invaders during their occupation of Britain, and a greenhouse with grapevines, peaches, ginger and myrtle. Known as Hexham Herbs until 2001, the garden contains 900 different herbs for use in cooking, medicine and dyeing.
Until now Chesters has opened each year in March and its website still announces that it will close in early May this year. However, Susie has decided not to open this spring. She’s already taken some of the plants out this winter and would be too difficult to open the shop for such a short period.
But Chesters is for the moment still open by appointment and, although it obviously won’t be at its flowering best, if you want to see this garden before it closes forever, you should get in touch with Susie as soon as possible.
Take a tour around the garden:
Address: Chesters Walled Garden | Chollerford | Hexham | Northumberland |NE46 4BQ
Telephone: +44 (0) 1434 681483
Email: enquiries@chesterswalledgarden.co.uk
Web Site: www.chesterswalledgarden.fsnet.co.uk
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