Date: Saturday, 19 May 2018
Time: 10am
Venue: Cragside, Rothbury NE65 7PX
Price: £11.50 or free for National Trust members

This year’s garden visit and spring walk takes us to Cragside, a National Trust property near Rothbury, in Northumberland, which was formerly the home of the arms manufacturer Lord Armstrong. Created out of a small hunting lodge, which Armstrong built between 1862 and 1864, the much enlarged house was transformed by the architect Richard Norman Shaw into a Tudor Revival mansion overlooking the dramatic gorge of the Debdon Burn. The surrounding landscape was also transformed, with the planting of what is estimated to be over 7 million trees and the rhododendrons that create such a spectacular display in the early summer. Now both house and estate are in the guardianship of the National Trust, which has recently acquired the formal gardens and greenhouses.

We plan to assemble in the Visitor Centre close to the car park at 10am with time for a quick coffee before a guided tour of the Formal Garden by Senior Gardener, Dale Stevens, from 10.30am to 12pm. This will be followed by lunch in the Visitor Centre.

After lunch, there will be a choice of two walks, a shorter (one hour) walk (the Basin Tank walk), led by Bill and Andrena Telford and a longer (two to three hours) walk led by Heather Cordell and Ray Brown (the Gun Walk).