How do you turn a book into a garden? And not just any book, or any garden. Stan Timmins’s challenge was to create a garden that would do justice to one of England’s most sacred texts: the 8^th century Lindisfarne Gospels, and it had to be fit for the Chelsea Flower Show.

But where should he begin?

“I had to do my research,” says Stan, who at the time was head of parks and gardens for Newcastle City Council. “I went to the British Library where the gospels are kept, and I saw the pages with the beautiful, elaborate illustrations of intertwined flowers that were common in the 8^th century on Lindisfarne (Holy Island), where the book was written, and realised that I could recreate the pages with classic council carpet bedding.

“But the garden also had to tell a story – the story of how the Gospels came to be created. I wanted to include Oswald, King of Bernicia, who invited Aidan to come from Iona and create a school of Christian learning on the island. I needed to have Cuthbert, who the gospels commemorate and without whom the book wouldn’t exist. And I needed Bede who wrote the Life of Cuthbert, because without him we wouldn’t know the Gospels’ story.”

Stan’s garden was a great success at Chelsea in 2003, taking silver. Many designers would have been happy to end things there, but Stan wanted his garden to live on – ideally in a permanent home on Holy Island. Today, that garden is in place, but the plans for further developments are so ambitious that this, I learned when I visited, is just the beginning of an ambitious project to honour St Cuthbert through a whole string of gardens.

Holy Island is a natural place of sanctuary. As I arrive, the tide is about to cover the causeway linking it to the Northumbrian mainland. Cross now and you will remain here for five hours, until the tide ebbs. The road, still wet from the last high tide, heads across the sands. It passes a hut on stilts, where trapped motorists can watch their cars drown and reflect upon their new-found status as pedestrians, and then sweeps along a mile of dunes before reaching the quiet village.

 It is 7am on a brilliant, early summer’s day, and I take a stroll.

At the heart of the village is the ruined red-stone Norman priory. Alongside is the 13th century Anglican parish church of St Mary, where a service is in progress. The church is close to the rocky shore, overlooking the expanse of glinting sandbanks between island and mainland.

On the other side of the priory is the harbour, where the upturned hulls of old fishing boats have been converted into stores through the addition of double doors let into the stern. A lanyard clangs on the mast of one of the yachts anchored in the bay.

Beyond, Lindisfarne castle stands on the shore like a child’s sand-bucket creation just beginning to crumble from the wind and waves. To the south is the more impressive bulk of Bamburgh Castle.

Stan’s garden is on Marygate, in the heart of the village, on a plot that was once an allotment, and across the street from the Lindisfarne Centre. There, high-tech screens allow you to see an electronic version of the Gospels, and to turn the virtual pages by passing your finger across the screen. Here in the garden, developed with a grant from the Lottery Heritage Fund, the Gospels live in a very different way.

It’s truly impressive, but Stan says that this is just a start. “I will be developing the garden this year. We know the monks used plants for colour in their illuminated manuscripts – feverfew, sage, lichens, toadflax, berries such as bilberry, mulberry, blueberry, elderberry, plus honeysuckle, iris, celandine – and I hope to bring them in to the garden

A Celtic cross stands beside the entrance, in a sea of hebe, euphorbia, wallflowers and heuchera. A Latin tag that translates as “In this unique sign life is restored to the world” is taken from a stone cross in St Paul’s Monastery, Jarrow, where Bede lived.

 “I used about 50,000 plants for Chelsea,” Stan tells me. “There was alternanthera, in green and purple varieties, arenaria, sedums, celandine, columbine, agapanthus, golden marjoram, heliotrope. But when we came to transfer the garden we had to re-think things

“Chelsea gardens are ephemeral. I had to make something sustainable, and low maintenance.”

The planting had to be able to withstand the sand, salt and 100mph gales. The features of the garden - the crosses, and the reredos that forms a backdrop and which were cut from ply for Chelsea - will be replaced by permanent works by local artists and craftsmen.

Oswald, Aidan, Cuthbert and Bede are currently represented by trellis plinths(?) but will become living topiary statues. 

 The yellow wallflowers that colonise stone walls all over the island are thriving here. “I wanted to go out and collect their seed at first,” says Stan, “but I didn’t need to, they came on their own.”

The reredos, visible through a rainbow arch that mirrors the remaining arch of the ruined priory across the village, is trailed in wisteria. Beneath it, an Acer represents the tree of life.

 The garden is dominated by a green oak Wheel Cross that bears Cuthbert’s name and a ghostly impression of his face. The work of sculptor Fenwick Lawson, it is key to the plans to create other gardens to honour St Cuthbert.

The Lindisfarne Gospels were created to mark the elevation of Cuthbert’s remains, which took place 11 years after his death on March 20, 698. According to legend, his body was miraculously intact, and the cult of St Cuthbert began. Around a century later the monks suffered in Viking raids and left Lindisfarne in 875, taking Cuthbert’s remains, and the Gospels, with them.

The community settled at times in Norham, Chester-le-Street and Ripon, before finally arriving at Durham.

 Dick Patterson, the island’s postman and a stalwart of the Lindisfarne Centre told me: “We’d like to create a Gospel Garden in each of those places, have the Wheel Cross cast and place a bronze copy in each garden. We’d call it the Cuthbert Trail.”

For Stan, creating this garden has deepened his faith. “I became more religious as I researched it and found out about Aidan, Oswald, Cuthbert and Bede. What I’ve made is a parable: my interpretation of that story, in a garden. Lots of people come and say a prayer here, and I think that’s magic.

“Everyone understands once they have seen the garden for themselves. I was working here with my son one day and he looked up and there were people praying and he said ‘Oh, is this what it’s all about?’

And Dick adds that the ambition doesn’t end with the creation of the Cuthbert Trail. They’d also like the Gospels back in the North East – and ideally on Holy Island itself. Given their determination, I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually achieve their goal.