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Drummond Castle Gardens, Perthshire

6/22/2014

10 Comments

 
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In late May I went home to Perthshire to see my mum, as usual. It's the perfect time, because the bluebell woods around Comrie are giving their best and the superb copper beeches that are such a signature note for this Scottish shire are in their prime, the colours emphasised by the lush greens of late spring. Thank goodness for rain!

Very close to where I went to school in Crieff are the gardens of Drummond Castle, near Muthhill. I remember them as an adolescent, but things have changed massively since those days. Garden visitors should be proud that their interest has sparked such a profitable renaissance of many of our oldest gardens, as well as the creation of newer gems.

The gardens were laid out in 1630 by John Murray, the 2nd Earl of Perth, and the parterre was changed to an Italian design in 1830. The central part of the parterre  is in the form of a St Andrew's cross, with a sundial shaped like an obelisk at its heart. A gradual programme of renovation and improved maintenance since the days when I was a schoolgirl has transformed the area; the RHS now describes it as 'probably the most important formal garden in Scotland'.

To my shame, I omitted to take a picture of the copper beech that Queen Victoria planted, but there are plenty of others in the far distance to strike the Perthshire signature note adequately. The Japanese maples on the parterre are echoes for them in colour and look superb in the autumn; judging by a panoramic photo in the ticket office (entry is £5.00 per adult) October would be a superb time to visit.


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Makes you fall in love with box all over again, doesn't it?

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Effective use has been made of long ribbons of grey foliage throughout the gardens - Anaphalis triplinervis and Stachys lanata for the most part. I was pleased to see evidence of box blight. Not in a Schadenfreude sort of way, but because they've all that Scottish rain to cope with and the gardeners carry on clipping, regardless. It gave me hope for my own small plot and my projected knot garden. So much so that  I came straight back to France and clipped the box, something I've feared to do for the last 18 months!

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Looking back up to the castle from the gardens
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Moving away down from the parterre and into the old walled kitchen garden. Couldn't get enough of that wonderful gargoyle in the stonework ...

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In the vegetable garden I was delighted to see that they have made a success of growing veggies on a slope - but I particularly envied the stout planking edges to the beds. The slope on this plot is much steeper than it looks!

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Beautiful espaliered and fan-trained fruit on the walls of the kitchen garden
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Oh for the space and a perfectly laid out vegetable garden like this - and, yes, some Scottish rain!
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More of Perthshire's swooningly beautiful copper beeches and - rhubarb for the plate (again, thank the rain).
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To the right, Plumbago capensis and (I think) the largest Pelargonium 'Caroline Schmidt' I have ever seen. I could have included so many glasshouse pictures - this is estate gardening at its best - pots for the house all year round. It reminded me of my old London council nursery days when we produced pot plants for the libraries and registry offices of Southwark.
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This must be what the RHS describe as the 'immensely old and lumpy yew massifs'. The classical statuary rearing up here and there against the green of yew and box is (as my husband would say) 'just right, just right'.

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There's something wonderfully Mediterranean about these old fruit trees
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I simply didn't want to stop taking photos - or to leave. My mother had just acquired a new iPad and I had that with me as well; the photos it took were even better than those taken with my little Nikon Coolpix, although I've had to use the Nikon photos for this post. Mum seemed slightly shocked when she noticed I'd taken over 300 photos. But I was more shocked by how much my gardening taste has changed over the years. Thirty years ago I could never have believed that I might fall so much in love with 'formal' ...

10 Comments
 


Meta van der Stelt
06/22/2014 11:36pm

What a wonderfull garden and how much work to get this result.

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Cathy Thompson link
06/23/2014 6:28pm

You've hit the nail on the head, Meta! An awful lot of work ... and most of haven't got time now. But it's wonderful to be able to enjoy away from home. Are you back in France now from Holland?

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Clare
06/23/2014 7:17am

What fabulous gardens, Cathy and what great photos!

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Cathy Thompson link
06/23/2014 6:30pm

Thanks Clare - it was an enchanting afternoon - I suspect you would have enjoyed it very much as well (thinking back to our visit to Berchigranges!)

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Pauline link
06/23/2014 12:04pm

What a fantastic garden, I can't believe we missed it when we were last up there! I do like a bit of formality, but this is amazing like Levens Hall in the Lake District, thank you for sharing it with us.

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Cathy Thompson link
06/23/2014 6:32pm

Glad you enjoyed, Pauline. You've reminded me that one of my regrets is that I never visited Levens when I still lived in the UK. But I've often admired it secondhand in other people's photos.

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TexasDeb link
06/23/2014 2:39pm

I cannot imagine the impact of growing up visiting a garden quite so grand, though as you say, your admiration for the more formal aspects of it have increased even as your own years spent gardening have.

We living and gardening here in very dry New World spaces have a tendency to scoff at the way previous generations of settlers tried to replicate the garden scenes left behind them, often by hundreds of years as well as hundreds of miles. Seeing these garden spaces is a humbling reprimand. For who would not try at least, to re-create even the smallest reminder of the gardens of home when they look like this? It is hauntingly beautiful.

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Cathy Thompson link
06/23/2014 6:38pm

Interesting point, Deb! It's worth remembering that a garden like this would (in the past) have been a bit of a closed book for the likes of me - only the gardeners would really have seen what went on behind the walls. In Scotland, such gardens are usually associated with a ruling 'English' class (speaking with English accents and educated in England) - the Earls of Perth would have been far above my ancestors and the garden was created to entertain their wealthy visitors, as well as being a plaything for themselves. So we are lucky now - we can visit and see for ourselves what money can buy - and of course it didn't look like that when I was a teenager, because it was so badly maintained (money again!)

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Donna@Gardens Eye View link
06/29/2014 3:27am

I am not a formal garden person except when they are on this scale....oh my goodness I love this garden and that veg garden is how I always wanted mine to be!

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Cathy Thompson link
07/04/2014 9:28pm

Late again Donna (me that is!) Anyway, I can only say that your last comment about the veg plot expresses my feelings exactly!

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    I learned to love plants many years ago when I gardened in London, but I started to learn how to garden properly when we came to this steep, south-facing slope in rainy north-east France in 2011.


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