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 color 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.
Makes you fall in love with box all over again, doesn't it?
Effective use has been made of long ribbons of gray 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!
Looking back up to the castle from the gardens
Moving away down from the parterre and into the old walled kitchen garden. Couldn't get enough of that wonderful gargoyle in the stonework ...
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!
Beautiful espaliered and fan-trained fruit on the walls of the kitchen garden
Oh for the space and a perfectly laid out vegetable garden like this - and, yes, some Scottish rain!
More of Perthshire's swooningly beautiful copper beeches and - rhubarb for the plate (again, thank the rain).
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.
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'.
There's something wonderfully Mediterranean about these old fruit trees
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' ...