Bountiful, blowsy and scented: The gravity-defying walled garden at the Palace of Bishop Auckland

The Palace of Bishop Auckland was built for the Prince Bishops of Durham. From the Middle Ages until 1836, these powerful men were much more than church leaders, acting as representatives of the Crown over all the land that lay between the rivers Tyne and Tees. With the power to raise an army, impose taxes and mint coins came ownership of a grand building that sits high above the picturesque valley where the rivers Wear and Gaunless run.

Although an ecclesiastical office still occupies a few rooms in the palace, by the start of this century the grandeur had long faded and the closure of the Durham coal mine in 1968 had robbed all sense of community and purpose from the town of Bishop Auckland. In 2012, in an unprecedented act of philanthropy, the investment banker Jonathan Ruffer and his wife, Jane, founded the Auckland Project, with the aim of restoring the castle and its extensive grounds to attract visitors to the area and, by doing so, bring life and employment back to the town.

An integral part of this imaginative rescue has been the landscaping of the ground around the palace. Cars have been banished and new enclosures created by Pip Morrison, the retained landscape architect for the project. The most dramatic of these spaces is the steeply sloping walled garden, which, since 2024, has been returned to full productive cultivation. In the days of the Prince Bishops, the estate would, as did most large country houses, have supplied all the vegetables, fruit and flowers needed for its owners, but large traditional kitchen gardens are now rare. Of about 600 former walled gardens in England, only about 25 of these in the care of the National Trust are still partially dedicated to productive crops. In private gardens these sheltered places are more likely to contain a swimming pool, a tennis court or some orchard trees, rather than enough vegetables, fruit and flowers to sustain a household.

Some walled gardens open to visitors, such as that at neighbouring Raby Castle, have been elaborately redesigned as ornamental spaces, which include some token crops. Others have ended up being used for grazing or cars. The last time I counted, there were perhaps 20 that might be said to be working gardens dedicated to productive crops left in the whole country. If you want to see fruit, vegetables and flowers grown in an old-fashioned way, the newest and most exciting example of this lost tradition is flourishing at Bishop Auckland in Co Durham. All the produce is used to cater for visitors and any surplus is sent to the local food bank.

Mr Morrison knew that allotments and flower shows had always been a feature of local life, so he wanted the two-acre walled garden to be a straightforward unfussy design that would reflect those ways of gardening, as well as the princely heritage of the place. Remarkably, he took the decision not to terrace the slope, where gradients vary between 1 in 5 and 1 in 3. Instead, curved level paths between steep beds planted with a mix of vegetables and flowers have been created to follow the contours of the hill, linked by short flights of stone steps. The detailing of stone, iron and trellis work, of copper water troughs and terracotta pots on stone plinths, is immaculate. The same materials are repeated everywhere for cohesion. The simplicity of the design is powerful and a walk between the cultivated plants feels timeless.

Perched above the garden is the tower house, home to the Ruffers as they continue to inspire and steer the project. Below the tower lies a narrow wedge-shaped upper garden containing an iron-framed glasshouse designed by the architects Mawson Kerr of Newcastle and built by Serres d’Antan in France. This upper level is more ornamental than the lower garden. Here, there are seats tucked into borders overlooking the slope. The lower garden is difficult to access because of the steps that link the contoured paths, but the view over the whole space with a backdrop of Deer Park behind is matchless.

If the design of the garden is restrained, the ornamental borders banked below the greenhouse are ebullient. Punctuated by figs in pots, the flowers include richly coloured dahlias, nasturtiums, agapanthus, Michaelmas daisies, alstroemerias, sunflowers and gladioli. All the beds in the garden are edged with Euonymus microphyllus, which has proved the perfect substitute for box and, because the beds are raked, the flowers can be enjoyed at eye level. In the lower garden, there are the leeks, gooseberries and dahlias, which were traditional features at northern shows, with rows of bright flowers for picking and plenty of edibles to supply the palace tearooms. The needs of the five gardeners under Andy Nesbitt are as well thought out as the design. Not every garden boasts purpose-built rooms where vegetables can be prepped and wet clothes dried.

Around the palace itself there are several new gardens. Where cars once parked there are lawns flanked by buildings, with trees for shade and seats to admire the view and the remodelled medieval palace with James Wyatt’s Gothic architecture. To the west of the palace, behind the Faith Museum, is the Quiet, or Faith, Garden. This is a cloistered space with a path layout that records the footprint of a medieval chapel destroyed in the Civil War. A grove of gleditsias makes a moving pattern of shadows on the gravel below. Sun, wind, space, greenery, silence, nothing more, except in a corner on a raised terrace, where there is a lavender hedge and seats to sit in contemplation.

In another small area, a pond with fountain is surrounded by formal beds of Geranium Rozanne. The newest of the spaces to be designed and planted is the Paradise Garden, only completed last summer. Here, a wide bed under the south-facing wall is packed with a mix of fruit and flowers grown between yew buttresses.

The aim, Morrison says, was for it to be ‘bountiful, blowsy and scented’. The walls are planted with apples, quince and vines, trained on the same strong trellis that is used everywhere. The borders are abundantly planted with roses, phlox, delphiniums, dahlias and many other favourite summer flowers. Instead of grass, the centre of the garden is sown with an annual cereal crop. This summer, it will be barley and field poppies.

The next phase of work will concentrate on the 150-acre deer park, where several 18th-century features will be restored. Researching the park was transformed when Mr Ruffer received a letter from Dr Dianne Barre alerting him to an account of a visit to Bishop Auckland in 1799 by Elizabeth Hervey, as well as drawings by Harriet Green, an amateur artist who accompanied her. In its heyday, the Picturesque landscape included a moss seat, a root house and a deer shelter, the latter of which can still be seen.

There are ancient hawthorns and stately trees, as well as a tumbling cascade that visitors can walk to see all year long, free of charge. The restoration of the park will, as with the rest of the gardens, be years in the making. The admirable Auckland Project shows how a long and careful process can produce not only changes to a place, but to people’s lives.

Visit the Auckland Project website to find out more.

This feature originally appeared in the August 5, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.