WELCOME TO THE GARDEN PARTY

There was little connection between this Victorian villa and the glorious mature grounds that surround it – until the new owners took matters into their own hands

- Caroline Ednie

Conventional wisdom suggests that when you retire, you’ll be wanting to downsize and put your feet up. If that’s the case, Nigel and Sue Evans have broken the rules. As their retirement approached, they were looking to relocate from Aberdeen to Edinburgh with the intention of finding a home they could put their stamp on.

That opportunity presented itself in the form of a handsome detached Victorian villa in the Midlothian suburb of Eskbank. “Our daughter had just moved to Eskbank and when we took a look around the area we could see that it was just beautiful,” recalls Sue. “There are so many really nice houses there. It’s a little further out of town than we’d initially imagined but it’s actually very accessible for Edinburgh.”

The villa’s grand scale appealed. “We wanted to have a good-sized family home with plenty of room to entertain,” explains Nigel. The mature garden was also a major selling point, so much so that right from the start the couple knew that as well as redecorating the interior they wanted to open up the back of the house to the garden. So, before they’d even put in an offer, they approached Níall Hedderman of Capital A Architecture to discuss their ideas and find out if they were achievable. 

“The house as it was had little connection to the garden,” Sue recalls. “In order to get to it from the back of the property, you had to go through a whole series of rooms – seven in total. The two just felt so detached. We wanted to open everything up with the idea that the garden would almost become part of the house.”