The Spell Garden

Come and explore the Spell Garden display in our lower ground-floor shippon.

There are ambitious plans afoot for a magical Cumbrian garden with a series of ‘rooms’ inspired by the spells in The Lost Spells and The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. Its home will be the woodland at YMCA Lakeside on the southwestern shores of Lake Windermere.

On the display’s panels, garden designer Nicola Hills shapes the concepts for the three-dimensional wonders that will become The Spell Garden. From the already partly-funded Kingfisher Swingfisher room to a spell hub shelter inspired by foraged fungi, the words and paintings of the books take on an unexpected but brilliant form.

Add your wishes for the garden to the willow spell tree and help make this garden grow.

The Spell Garden display is free to view and will be with us until well into 2025.

Younger visitors can sit at the nature table. There’s colouring, drawing and a memento bookmark to craft and take home, too. 

We love Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s books and are thrilled to be a partner for this development phase of the Spell Garden.