Grand Designs

Close to the village of Muthill in Perthshire is one of Scotland’s oldest and grandest gardens. It sits at the foot of a rocky outcrop, watched over by Drummond Castle, which has occupied this space in one form or another since 1490.

The garden that lies here today is a 19th century revival of its 17th century incarnation and it is one of the few formal gardens to have survived the fashion for landscaping, when all was swept away to be replaced by ponds and parkland.

At the heart of the garden is the parterre, a huge and intricate design in box hedging and beech that covers a full nine acres. Spikes and domes of yew and holly act like punctuation marks between the sharp lines of the hedging and the closely-mown grass, while beyond the high walls the trees that cover the rolling countryside are, by October, colouring up like the embers of a bonfire.

Within the parterre, the yellow and red blooms of Rosa ‘Top Rose’ and ‘Evelyn Fison’, which represent the Drummond heraldic colours, have embarked on a final flourish while the Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) has turned butter-yellow and the Acers are dropping their crimson leaves in overlapping circles.

Drummond Castle has a long and fascinating history. It has survived changing fashions, turbulent fortunes and finding itself on the wrong side of the Jacobite cause. Today it is owned by the Grimsthorp and Drummond Castle Trust which maintains the garden so that visitors can enjoy its unique beauty.

What Drummond does better than anywhere else is deliver an element of surprise. No glimpse of the garden can be caught until you set foot on the terrace, from where the parterre can be seen laid out below. From above it looks like a giant board game set against the dramatic backdrop of Ben Chonzie.

The inner portion of the parterre forms at St Andrews cross in low box hedging with, at its centre, a multi-faceted sundial by master mason John Mylne that has stood on this spot since 1630.

It was Clementina Drummond and her husband Peter Robert Burrell, later Baron Willoughby de Eresby, who in the first half of the 19th century set out the broad terraces and laid the parterre upon its 17th century ghost. Soon after that the garden began to bloom with the new introductions arriving from Asia and the New World and for a time the parterre was ablaze with colour.

When Queen Victoria visited in 1842 she planted two copper beech trees and recorded in her diary: "We walked in the Garden which is really very fine, with terraces, like an old French garden."

Eventually the permanent planting matured and photographs from 1857 show dense shrubbery. A century later and the inevitable neglect of two world wars had further taken a toll and so a decision was taken to simplify the whole.

Yet unlike other great gardens that were inevitably reduced by this process of editing, Drummond emerged revitalised, like a jewel that had been polished.

Pruning the box hedges is carried out during the summer but trimming other hedges and shaping topiary continues throughout the winter, whenever the weather allows, and it takes three full days to wrap all the statues in special Gortex overcoats.

Winter wet can be a problem here and while recent drainage works have improved conditions for the lavenders and santolinas that line the parterre, two of the venerable Portugese laurels that stand in a formal grove beneath the south-east corner of the castle have been lost.

The garden is a recording station for the Met Office and temperatures of -14C and below are not unknown. Even in milder winter, the garden can become a giant frost pocket.

Gales are seldom a problem, but they do happen and one recent casualty was one of the two Copper beech trees planted by Queen Victoria. Yet Drummond can survive such losses and dazzle during the winter months because of its strong underlying geometry that can really only be seen at its best when the last of the autumn leaves has fallen.

SUNDIALS
Throughout the 17th century polyhedral sundials began to appear in some of Scotland's greatest garden. The sundial at Drummond was created by master mason John Mylne and its gnomons show the time in different capital cities around the world.

HERALDIC DEVICES
The pattern of wavy lines of black and white pebbles around the base of the sundial is taken from the Drummond coat of arms. The criss cross pattern within the box hedges refers to the Willoughby coat of arms and coronets of box complete a trio of heraldic devices.

FAMOUS GARDENERS
Significant figures who have left their mark on Drummond include Lewis Kennedy, who came to Drummond from Malmaison where he had worked for the Empress Josephine at the height of the Napoleonic Wars and Sir Charles Barry, architect and landscape designer who would go on to create Italian gardens at Trentham, Staffordshire and Shrubland, Suffolk.

Garden Notebook
Location: One mile along a tree-lined avenue that leads from the A822 outside the village of Muthill in Perthshire.
Size: 12 acres
Soil: Heavy and prone to waterlogging but improved by 500 years of cultivation
Garden: The 19th century recreation of a 17th century design with Italianate features, terracing and statuary, dominated by a huge parterre in the shape of a St Andrew’s Cross.
History: The garden was begun in the 1490s but extensively remodeled in the Scottish Renaissance style in the 17th century, then restored in the 19th century.
Season of interest: The structure provided by the parterre and topiary gives Drummond year-round impact.
Open: Daily until 31 October from 1pm – 6pm.
Contact: Drummond Castle Gardens, Muthill, Crieff, Perthshire, PH7 4HN. Tel: 01764 681433

www.drummondcastlegardens.co.uk.