SCOTLAND has a strong tradition of walled gardens created at a distance from a country house or castle, originally to supply the Victorian or Edwardian homes built when productive kitchen gardens were at their zenith. A number survive and have been restored in recent decades, but even more impressive is when one is created from scratch, as has happened during the past few years at Aldourie Castle, which sits overlooking the head of Loch Ness a few miles south-west of Inverness.
In 2014, the 500-acre Aldourie estate was purchased by the Danish couple Anders and Anne Povlsen. Over the previous 10 years or so, Mr and Mrs Povlsen had acquired a series of Scottish estates, which, collectively, have made them the country's largest landowners. The inspiration for their acquisition of some of Scotland's most remote and spectacular tracts of countryside has been the conservation of wild, natural landscape. At Aldourie, the inspiration was slightly different, the celebration of a castle that told a classic Scottish story: originally modest, but secure in the 17th century; baronialised in the 19th century; domesticated and modernised in the early 20th century-in a landscape and garden setting that are in part new, but sympathetic to the place's past.
Mr and Mrs Povlsen had seen and admired gardens by Tom Stuart-Smith and invited him to work at Aldourie. The designer first visited in 2015 and, from the outset, has relished the scope of the brief: rejuvenating the established landscape setting, in particular the parkland and the 19th- and early20th-century arboretum; at the same time as creating completely new gardens, the west garden between the castle and Loch Ness and the walled garden some 200 yards away to the north-east. In these new gardens, Aldourie's heritage would be embraced in designs that are boldly contemporary.
Denne historien er fra September 13, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 13, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Tales as old as time
By appointing writers-in-residence to landscape locations, the National Trust is hoping to spark in us a new engagement with our ancient surroundings, finds Richard Smyth
Do the active farmer test
Farming is a profession, not a lifestyle choice’ and, therefore, the Budget is unfair
Night Thoughts by Howard Hodgkin
Charlotte Mullins comments on Moght Thoughts
SOS: save our wild salmon
Jane Wheatley examines the dire situation facing the king of fish
Into the deep
Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter's paradise, reports John Lewis-Stempel
It's alive!
Living, burping and bubbling fermented masses of flour, yeast and water that spawn countless loaves—Emma Hughes charts the rise and rise) of sourdough starters
There's orange gold in them thar fields
A kitchen staple that is easily taken for granted, the carrot is actually an incredibly tricky customer to cultivate that could reduce a grown man to tears, says Sarah Todd
True blues
I HAVE been planting English bluebells. They grow in their millions in the beechwoods that surround us—but not in our own garden. They are, however, a protected species. The law is clear and uncompromising: ‘It is illegal to dig up bluebells or their bulbs from the wild, or to trade or sell wild bluebell bulbs and seeds.’ I have, therefore, had to buy them from a respectable bulb-merchant.
Oh so hip
Stay the hand that itches to deadhead spent roses and you can enjoy their glittering fruits instead, writes John Hoyland
A best kept secret
Oft-forgotten Rutland, England's smallest county, is a 'Notswold' haven deserving of more attention, finds Nicola Venning
