THE GARDEN TODAY
The revival of the Old Deanery Garden has been taken up by a group of local volunteers. The aim is not to reconstruct the garden of William Turner's time, because there is no evidence of what that looked like. Instead, it includes plants Turner mentioned in his writings.
Features are being introduced which reflect the kind of garden he would have recognised, such as the Tudor-style path layout and the four great terracotta pots of characteristic 1500s shape.
One of the Chequer beds
The Chequer Beds flanking the porch, and marked out with stone setts, contain medicinal plants mentioned by Turner. For the "windy colic" he prescribed a herbal bath of germander, thyme, saxifrage, mallow, hollyhock, hyssop, balm, feverfew and horehound all boiled up, added to 2 or 3 gallons of cows' milk, and topped up with water as hot as the patient could bear. He recommended hart's tongue fern "against the bytings of serpents" and clove pinks "for the bytynge of a madd dogge". Plant List >>
The Little Orchard contains period fruit trees – black mulberry, early apple trees, a medlar, a quince, and a perry pear. "We have many kyndes of gardin Peares with us in Englande", Turner wrote. The orchard is underplanted with spring bulbs. Plant List >>
The Rampart Walk, with seat and spectacular view of Wells Cathedral West Front, is currently under development and is taking shape.
The Little Orchard
The Gunthorpe Bed where ferns mentioned by Turner grow in the shade of Dean Gunthorpe's great hall, and a new bed at this end of the garden is devoted to plants listed by Turner that were used in cloth-making and dyeing. Plant List >>
The autumn flowering cyclamen, which Turner calls 'Sowesbrede', form a spreading carpet under the great beech tree and are spectacular in season.
The revival of the Old Deanery Garden is an ongoing project. A garden existed here 400 years before William Turner, 'the Father of English Botany'. It is still here 400 years after him.