Wall-to-wall brilliance

Inside the early-18th-century walls of Hopetoun House, West Lothian, bold planting schemes and original designs are providing an exciting new use for this 12-acre former kitchen garden, discovers Noel Kingsbury

- Noel Kingsbury

I WANTED it to look as if it has always been there,’ explains Skye, the Countess of Hopetoun, of the garden she has been making since 2008 at Hopetoun House, where she lives with her husband, Andrew, Earl of Hopetoun, and their four children. ‘People would come in,’ she adds, ‘and see that the planting is contemporary, but that the hedges were there and I had merely smudged the lines... It should look as if it has evolved, belongs and is appropriate.

‘There are times and places,’ Lady Hopetoun continues, ‘when I like people’s grand modern statements, but I don’t want to do that here. I want something that feels gentler... not that everyone likes my planting, indeed, some of my family don’t like what I have done.’

Hopetoun House, just outside Edinburgh, may have an estate with an extensive 18thand 19th-century landscape and a 12-acre walled former kitchen garden that dates back to the early 1700s, but it has only a very limited history of having anything strictly ornamental within its walls. To make such an addition to an important historic property is bold, but Lady Hopetoun is bold, as well as very energetic, and very hands-on.