The Black Mulberries of the Bishop's Palace

Five black mulberries were planted in the Bishop's Palace gardens in 1897. Two of them are still here, and since 2001 they have had company. A third mulberry was given to Bishop Bickersteth as a present for his 80th birthday, so the Palace now has three, an old pair and a young one. That makes the survivors about 130 years old, a figure that comes from the documented planting date rather than an estimate, which is rarer than it sounds for a tree in an English garden. Black mulberries tend to grow into low, broad, leaning crowns that look older than they are, so a known date is the useful thing to have. They stand on the wide lawns of the Palace gardens, laid out as pleasure grounds by Bishop Law in 1825 and 1826, with the roofless ruins of the bishops' Great Hall behind them. The gardens are a Grade II registered landscape and an RHS partner garden, and the mulberries share the lawns with other specimen trees, among them a tulip tree that the Palace says is almost 200 years old. No girth has been published for either of the old pair. In late summer the dark fruit ripens on the branches.