Garden Article by Antoinette Galbraith

For Scotland on Sunday 24^th June 2007 

The first time Gill and Peter Hart saw Kirklands House, the Georgian Manse built in 1832 they were just “being nosy.”  Gill explains.  “We had no intention of moving, we just drove up to have a look.”  But it was love at first sight.  “As we drove up the driveway we knew right away we wanted to live here, we knew we had to have it.”  

Just one glance up the driveway and you know what they mean.   Kirklands is situated on the sunny, south-facing side of a glen above the village of Saline in Fife with wide-open views of rolling farmland. A framework of mature beech trees surrounds the garden and the Saline Burn runs long the foot of the glen.   But thirty years ago, when the couple first saw the house, there was no garden just a lawn in front of the house with a few rhododendrons.  Yet Peter for whom gardening is a life consuming passion realised at once the potential of the setting.  

Such was the couple’s excitement that they hardly noticed a remarkable group of four larger than life size statues the work of Edinburgh sculptor Robert Forrest between 1820 and 1840 sited on the right side of the driveway. Two Burns characters, Tam O’Shanter and Souter Johnny are both sitting while the two standing figures are Simon and Bauldy characters from a poem by George Ramsay.    

The framework of the new garden was frustrating slow to emerge.   “There were a lot of things that had to be done before we could get started,” Peter says.  “There were crumbling walls to be restored and elms stricken with Dutch Elm disease to remove.”  The couple also had two young children Louisa now 29 and Mark 27 to look after.  “They kept falling out of trees and we kept getting distracted by building tree houses,” Peter laughs, musing that with their first grand-child expected at the end of the year that sort of work might once again be on the agenda.  

The lack of a real plan was a deliberate strategy with the shape of the land dictating the ultimate layout. The front garden took shape when a row of beech trees were coppiced and turned into a hedge to act as a backdrop for a curved herbaceous border that runs the length of the driveway. The couple’s attitude to planting is relaxed and ultimately successful. Insisting that none of the borders are planned, Peter says they work by trying things. “If they aren’t right you just dig them up and move them around.” 

As h e kept on digging the lower garden – just above the burn - revealed surprise findings that kept the couple motivated.  “You put your space in the ground and suddenly a few hours later you’ve uncovered a set of stone steps leading to the burn,” Peter says, adding that this discovery took place while he was restoring the 300 meter long (Would this be right? Could it be longer? stone wall that retains the south facing side of the burn, a remarkable achievement for one person as the wall is at least 7ft high in places.   

Once the wall was mended the couple began planting trees on the slope above the burn, creating a woodland garden planted with birch, sorbus, prunus and rhododendrons under planted with spring bulbs. The path along the burn leads to a dramatic bog garden, which must be one of the very few bog gardens sited on a slope.  Peter explains: “The soil is kept moist with several springs underneath,”   Here, the different textures of gunnera, irises, rodgersia, hostas, ligularia and ferns sprinkled with primula and iris flow down the 40ft slope in a water fall of green before appearing to tumble into the burn.  “It’s precarious weeding a slope like this with an 8ft drop into the burn below,” Peter say, adding that he starts from the bottom and works his way up, planting everything as close together as possible to suppress the weeds. 

The paths leads up the hill and into an orchard at the foot of the perfectly proportioned walled garden another part of the garden Peter and Gill hadn’t seen before they decided to buy.  At that time it was completely overgrown but now restoration is in full swing with the couple doing all the work themselves as ever.  Explaining that no one knows why the walled garden was situated on the slope “there was after all plenty of flat land available in a sunny position, Peter says that the only way to cultivate the garden was to build terraces.   These terraces, which have a distinct Italian feel, have now been laid out with raised beds separated by gravel paths  “With the amount of rain we have in Scotland , you need paths between the beds,” he says. “Otherwise when it is wet you can’t get into the garden.”  

The wall at the top of the garden is softened with plantings of espaliered apples and the first bit of the slope is laid out with a triangular pattern of box, a framework that is filled in the spring with red and yellow tulips and later with catmint.  Although work still continues on the vegetable garden, there are strawberries, beans, lettuces and a row of tomatoes in the greenhouse sitting at the top of the slope.   

The central point of the garden is a bench, covered by a pergola smothered in white rambling roses, such a Rambling Rector, Seagull, Wedding Day.  Building the pergola was the first thing they did in the garden and they found the pergola was the perfect place to make plans.   “We just sat and contemplated and when your idea seems exactly right in your mind you start work on it,” Peter says.  “Some of the things we have done, like the walled garden, have taken us 20 years to start. We like to get the structure right first but if the planting doesn't work we can easily try again.”

                               -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------