Things to do in the garden at Acorn Bank

Summer highlights in the garden

Take inspiration from Acorn Bank's beautiful garden this summer. From the Lily Border to the Orchard, the garden is overflowing with colour and bursting with fragrance at this time of year. We've put together a list of our favourites to look out for when you visit.

Roses and climbing flowers

June and July are the best months to see (and smell) the highly fragrant shrub roses outside the Dovecote. You can find climbing and rambling rose varieties in the walled garden. Make the most of your vertical space at home by taking away some inspiration from the various climbers you'll see here. Discover sweetpeas, jasmine, Virginia creeper, climbing hydrangea, wisteria and chocolate vine, amongst others.

The colourful herbaceous border

The herbaceous border in the Sunken Garden is at its peak in late June and July. Standout flowers include colourful campanulas, red valerian, foxgloves and pink opium poppies. The Sunken Garden is also planted with anemone, bergenia, harts’-tongue fern and London pride, which means something is always in bloom all year round in this area.

The fragrant Herb Garden

The herb collection sits within its own peaceful walled garden and peaks towards the end of June. With over 250 herbs, it’s the largest collection in the National Trust’s care. Historically, these plants all have a purpose, whether it’s for culinary, medicinal or industrial uses, or for dyeing fabric, removing toxins from soil or even banishing bedbugs from the house. See if you can spot valerian or angelica when you wander through.

Newts in the ornamental lily pond

The Sunken Garden is an oasis of calm which revolves around the ornamental lily pond, home to all three species of UK newt. The smooth, palmate and great crested newt all live here and you can spot them sunbathing from May onwards. They use the nooks and crannies in the dry-stone walls around the terraces as hiding places.

Apples ripening in the orchards

The orchards are dripping with fruit in August. Between the main Walled Garden and the Top Orchard there are 175 mouth-watering apple varieties ripening on the branch. Alongside apples you’ll also find damsons, pears, quinces and mulberries maturing, plus a wide range of soft fruit.

Bee-friendly veg patches

We've planted vegetable beds with pollinator-friendly flowers to attract bees, butterflies and other helpful insects. We hope they might inspire you to have a go at growing fruit and vegetables at home, with handy tips at each bed and examples of what to grow in smaller spaces.

The delicate Lily Border

The Lily Border is packed with pink martagon lilies, yellow Pyrenean lilies and orange leopard lilies in late June. These are all variants of the Turk's cap lily, which have pretty pendulum-shaped flowers rather than the larger, more showy lily varieties. The border is also filled with hostas and ferns.

A potted history

The 17th-century walls shelter the National Trust's largest collection of medicinal and culinary plants in the herb garden, and the traditional orchards are surrounded by herbaceous borders. Beyond the walls, the new orchard contains a growing collection of local apples.

A series of small, linked gardens celebrates continuous development and adaptation over at least 350 years. The first brick-lined walls date from around 1650, originally enclosing a productive vegetable garden with a smaller area for fruit. This was protected by a wall heated with the flue gases from three fires.

By the 1830s the emphasis had moved towards fruit production and more decorative elements. There was also a lower garden on the banks of the Crowdundle Beck which was used to grow vegetables, but this is now woodland.

Dorothy Una Ratcliffe’s legacy

Dorothy Una Ratcliffe carried on this work in the 1930s and 1940s with a walled garden full of fruit and flowers. She added new and salvaged ornamental ironwork and statuary by creating a wildflower and bird reserve on the bank behind the house and a pond between the house and watermill.

Daffodils and apple trees were protected from the wartime Dig For Victory plough by making a new vegetable-growing area adjacent to the walled garden.

Discover the scents of the Herb Garden

The team at Acorn Bank has directly managed the garden since 1969. The first herb garden was laid out by Graham Stuart Thomas in the smaller of the walled gardens. This herb garden was redesigned and comprehensively replanted in 2003. It now holds over 275 different varieties and is the largest medicinal Herb Garden in the National Trust's care .

A Silent Space

We're part of an initiative called 'Silent Space', which was set up in 2016 to invite more peace and quietness into people's lives. Gardens around the country had the opportunity to opt in and offer visitors an area to switch off from technology and stop talking. Every year or two we switch up the location and this year it's in the Herb Garden. All you need to do is put away your phone, close your eyes, take a deep breath and soak up the sounds and smells, as the special collection of plants quietly grow around you.

This Silent Space is available for peace-seekers seven days a week, from 10.30am-5pm.

Want to know more about Silent Spaces? (external link)

Stroll through the Orchard

The garden is also becoming increasingly known for its orchards. A collection of more than 100 local apple varieties has been established in Dorothy Una Ratcliffe’s vegetable garden, and a succession of manure hotbeds have also been built in this area to provide early salad crops for the tea-room.

At the top of the orchards there is a teaching apiary with four buzzing beehives, which was established by Penrith Beekeepers.