Walk The Line

Scotland’s first formal gardens have been reinvigorated with geometric precision by their current custodian.

- Non Morris

NOTHING quite prepares you for your arrival at Kinross house. I’m gently making my way along a side street in the village of Kinross when, quite suddenly, I find myself before a pair of imposing iron gates. Beyond is a dazzling surprise: a long, tree-lined avenue that guides my eye to the centre of a splendidly proportioned house, the first proper neo-Classical country house in Scotland—architect Sir William Bruce was the father of Classicism in Scotland.

As I get closer, the enormous, immaculately mowed West Lawn is revealed. When Donald Fothergill bought Kinross house in 2011, he was determined that the tradition of playing cricket on the lawn should continue. With one of the charming ogee-roofed pavilions concealing an outdoor loo and the backdrop of the house making it ‘surely one of the finest imaginable pitches in the country’, the annual match hosted by the Kinross house invitation Xi must be a spectacular sight.

These days, the lawn is also used for arrivals by helicopter. head gardener Kenny Stewart, who meets me on the front steps, recalls mowing a tartan lawn for a guest passionate about his Scottish lineage.

Looking back at the drive, he remembers guiding a team of tree surgeons to prune back the mature woodland ‘just enough’ to create a band of light on either side of the house. it was a subtle, but effective move and typical of the attention to detail that drives the restoration of this garden. the revitalised house (Country Life, August 12, 2009; March 11, 2016) won the historic houses Association Restoration Award in 2013.

However, the real wonder of the garden is yet to come. From the top of the steps, one can see through the ground-floor rooms of the house to the formal gardens on the other side, where a path is exactly aligned with the centre of Loch Leven Castle on the island in the lake.