The Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle in County Durham

The first time I saw The Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle in County Durham, I was more than taken aback. I wasn’t expecting a beautiful French chateau in Teesdale, much less the wonderful treasures which the Bowes contained and all surrounded by a delightful garden in the French style.

The Bowes family came to Teesdale following the Norman Conquest and through a number of shrewd marriages down the centuries eventually became prominent in mining and transport. They spent their money on horses, the arts and gardening. In 1767 Mary Eleanor Bowes married one John Lyon, the ninth Earl of Strathmore, of Glamis Castle, and two of their children became the 10th and 11th Earls – hence the connection with the late Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth.

The Museum’s founder, John Bowes, the illegitimate but acknowledged son of the 10th Earl, was an English aristocrat, Liberal MP and successful businessman. He travelled to Paris to further his interest in the arts and met Benoit-Josephine Coffin-Chevallier, who he married in 1852.

It was in fact Josephine's idea to create a museum and public park in John’s home town of Barnard Castle and they used money she received from the sale of her own chateau to buy the land and purchase the objects for display. Josephine was herself a talented painter and her interests were wide ranging covering art, ceramics, furniture and textiles.

The foundation stone was laid in 1869 and work began on laying out the park, making full use of the sloping site which was used for planting specimen trees bought between 1870 and 1876. Some of these trees survive to this day including a monkey-puzzle tree. ‘Aruacaria araucana’ was not introduced into England until 1844, so there is a good chance this tree might be one of the original seeds. It was bought for 15 guineas in 1871 which was more than the Bowes' paid for their paintings by El Greco and Goya!

By 1883 the gardens were finished with basins and ponds and in 1912 a bandstand was erected over the central basin, opened by Lady Glamis. Sadly, this was removed in 1951. Today, the gardens remain a public park and benefit the museum who use them for events such as the Teesdale Food and Craft Festival and the Teesdale Brass Band Contest. In place of the bandstand there now stands a fountain, recently restored to working order.

The Museum has a commanding position on a terrace with a formal garden below in the form of a parterre. The whole is surrounded by peaceful parkland with many exotic trees. The actual parterre was never finished in the way it was suggested by original drawings, but many of the original specimen trees do remain. Between 1907 and 1913 the gardens were developed further with mass planting in the original parterre, a bowling green and lawn tennis courts.

Head gardener Val Cockfield has been a gardener at Bowes for 23 years, ever since she left college. When she first arrived there were three full-time gardeners, but now she is in sole charge. She is helped by contractors who help her with the tree work and putting in the bedding plants, otherwise she works alone in cutting the 40,000 square metres of grass 19 times a year.

Val explained that she doesn't encounter any great problems with the planting, although the garden is laid out in the French style, she uses English planting to suit the climate so there are no problems with delicate plants. One of the things she does like doing is being able to stand back and admire the garden when she has finished a particularly physical task such as cutting the one-and-a-half miles of box hedge. She also likes visitors, especially if they are gardeners, to stop and chat and to compliment her on a job well done.

So how does she decide on planting each year? "Because I am a one-man band, looking after all the gardens and park myself, I look for things like geraniums, which are quite low maintenance and don't need dead-heading." She explained.

But does the French parterre style inhibit the type of planting? "It would be nice to have a wider variety of planting in the parterre garden," she says. "But I combat this by changing colour schemes each year while retaining the low maintenance factor."

Val feels that although there is a good mixture of unusual trees, had the founder, John Bowes, lived to see the museum opened, he would have had a greater input of varieties. He had a wonderful knowledge of plants – he planted 140 different species of pine at his ancestral home at Streatlam Park. One of Val’s favourites is the giant Sequioa, which was introduced to England when it was discovered during the American gold rush.

Val has introduced species such as a Tulip tree, which will take about 15 years to flower, and a handkerchief tree. The wood of the Tulip tree can be used as veneer and she thinks it is possible that furniture in the museum might have been made using such wood: “We have such wonderful varieties here, such as our Cedar of Lebanon tree and a Butternut, which is a bit like a walnut and I am delighted to be able to carry on the tradition of planting for the next and future generations.”

In the 1980s further development of the gardens took place with the parterre being re-designed and the pond re-opened. Fountains were installed and sixty-nine more specimen and native trees planted.

Today, the Gardens are much admired by visitors to The Bowes. The Museum itself has fine collections dedicated to European fine and decorative arts from the Middle Ages to their own time. One of its most exciting and much loved objects is the Silver Swan, dating from 1773. The life-sized swan when set in motion, appears to preen itself and bend its neck to take a fish out of the water. It is still operated twice a day and is a definite crowd puller.

Log onto www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk for more information – there is plenty of parking and wheelchair access. The Bowes can be found on Newgate, in Barnard Castle, just off the A66 in the North of England.