Netherby Hall

About Netherby Hall

Netherby Hall garden covers approximately 36 acres and consists of a 1.5 acre walled kitchen garden, with herbaceous borders, traditional kidney beds amongst wonderful lawns, woodlands with many fine specimen trees, Azaleas, Rhododendrons, all set in a designed landscape bordering the River Esk.

The garden really comes to life in Spring with an extended performance of flowering bulbs from Snowdrops and Aconites in the early spring followed by many varieties of Daffodils, then Bluebells in late May and June with Tulips in the walled garden and Irises in the pleasure ground.

Netherby Hall is built on the site of a Roman Fort, Castra Exploratorum, a frontier garrison for the Roman army and the location has been occupied by various settlements before and since. There is some evidence that there were settlements at Netherby long before the Romans came and so there is probably a history of gardening here that stretches back into the mists of time.

The gardens in their present form date back to the latter half of the 18th century, there is date of 1786 on one of the beams in the present Head Gardener’s house which gives an estimated age for the walled garden. This matches up with the tenure of Dr Robert Graham who implemented an extensive remodelling of the house during this period. An article by James Dickson dated 8th February 1877 in the Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener describes the garden in some detail. He mentions that many of the trees had reached maturity indicating that the grounds had been laid out for some time, good evidence for this being the late 18th C. He goes on to describe flower beds with bedding schemes typical of Victorian gardens. He also goes into some detail describing all the different glasshouses and what was grown in them.

From discussions with various local inhabitants it seems that the walled garden has been used for growing commercial crops such as tomatoes and chrysanthemums. There are also photographs showing nearly all the walled garden covered with glasshouses and these are thought to date from around the 1950s. They have now been demolished and the present owners have initiated a programme of garden restoration.

The new glasshouses are Victorian replicas, but with biomass heating linked to an electronic climate control system, with heated beds and benches for the all year-round production of micro veg and other salad crops. Other produce that requires warmth, such as tomatoes, aubergines and peppers are grown in season. Grapevines are to be trained underneath the glasshouse roof and peaches, apricots and nectarines are being espaliered against the walls. The kitchen garden is being put back into use for its original purpose of growing fruit and vegetables which are now used in the kitchens at the nearby Michelin-starred Pentonbridge Inn.
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