The Riddle Trail

Explore The Gardens on our unique trail, discovering artwork along the way. Follow playful riddles penned by poet Berlie Doherty, leading you from one piece to the next. You’ll discover an array of plants from around the world, tread in dinosaur footprints and even meet a bear!

Hand carved stone inscription on a stone wall.

Vultures Inscription

Celia Kilner, 1999 and 2004

Stone inscription

The first in the series of riddles and the starting point to your journey around the Botanical Gardens.

  • The wall of the Curator's House

Glass Sculpture

Jez Thompson, 2000-2004

Glass, bronze and silver paper

Images of tadpoles and frogspawn can be seen sandwiched between two layers of glass. Can you find any other creatures in the pond?

  • The rock and water garden

Handcarved stone with set in soil.

Riddle Stone

Steve Roche, 2024

Hand carved stone

Steve is a specialist letter carver, producing calligraphic designs worked into hand carved inscriptions.

  • Marnock Garden

Riddle Stone

Steve Roche, 2024

Hand carved stone

Steve is a specialist letter carver, producing calligraphic designs worked into hand carved inscriptions.

  • Silver birch woodland

Bronze cast dinosaor footprints set in woodland soil leading to a fossilised tree stump.

Dinosaur Footprints

Chris Campbell, 2005

Two bronze cast footprints

The footprints are those of a dinosaur!

There were no flowers in the Carboniferous period – when the nearby fossil lycopod stump grew. This was about 310 million years ago!

  • Evolution garden

Pan / Spirit of the Woods

Cast: H.W. Cashmore & Company, 1936 Installed: 1953 Renovated: Chris Boulton, 2005

Bronze

Gifted by Sir Charles Clifford - a famous benefactor to the city. While it's often called Peter Pan, the statue is in fact Pan, the playful Greek god of the woods, flocks, and pastures. Originally, Pan held a musical pipe but its disappearance wasn’t known until after the statue was renovated!

  • Centre of the gardens

Rusted steel statue of a friendly looking brown bear.

Bear

David Mayne, 2005

Welded and rusted mild steel

The Bear Pit was once lived in by real bears! Bruin was the first to call it home, followed by two more bears. The rooms you can see are where the bears were lured with food while the keepers safely cleaned out the pit.

  • The bear pit

Protea

Coralie Turpin, 2003

Mosaic tesserae

The earliest members of the protea family date back to the Late Cretaceous 66 – 100 million years ago (mya). The oldest fossil flower is dated to 120 mya!

  • South Africa room in the Pavilions

For 2025 the trail has been reinstated with new artwork commissioned to replace those that had deteriorated.

The trail can now be followed as a whole again thanks to funding by Sheffield Botanical Gardens Trust.

 The two original artworks have been replaced by a “riddle stone” hand carved by Steve Roche. The replaced artworks are:

  • Woodland Creature Timber Bench by Designers: Bryan Frisby and Sue Jenner Woodcarver: Nick Hunter, 2004. A red oak bench composed of a twisting branch and plank sawn from the same tree that once grew in the gardens.

  • Ceramic Leaves by Tracey Heyes, 2005. Ceramic leaves set in the rim of a stone wall supporting a circular raised flower bed. Remnants of the ceramic leaves can still be seen around the circular raised stone bed.

The original trail was created when the Heritage Lottery Fund's Urban Parks Programme was established in 1996, the Sheffield Town Trust, Sheffield City Council, University of Sheffield, Friends of the Botanical Gardens, and Sheffield Botanical Gardens Trust formed a partnership to bid for funds to restore the Gardens. A year later, the Gardens were awarded just over £5 million with 25% matched funding.

New to the Gardens was 'The Riddle Trail', initiated by Sheffield's 'Off the Shelf Festival of Writing and Reading' in 1999 in collaboration with the Sheffield Botanical Gardens. Funding came from a number of sources: the Arts Council of England and the Regional Arts Lottery Programme, as well as the Heritage Lottery Fund Local Parks Programme award for the restoration of the Gardens.