Lowther Castle

A winter visit to see how the new gardens are coming along at Lowther Castle, outside Penrith.

I admire what they’re doing at Lowther - taking a ruin and planting a garden within it.

It’s opened the site up to the public and in 20 years it will look magnificent I’m sure.

At the moment a lot of imagination is needed but I’m going back in the summer so I look forward to seeing it full of colour.

There are essentially two parts to the garden: inside and around the Castle itself and then the wider estate. That is made up of several sections, including a new Rose Garden designed by Dan Pearson, a restoration of the old Rock Garden and a new Japanese Garden - below.

This is the new Japanese Garden.

I can’t help feeling that they’ve missed a trick here - when building a new garden entirely from scratch, why wouldn’t you make it accessible?

I contrast it with the new garden in Sheffield Park that I wrote about here. It was designed for people using wheels - wheelchairs and pushchairs - with plenty of seats and space.

It’s hard to make old gardens suitable for wheels but when you’re starting on a new site, it makes sense to me to take that into consideration.