66. Abbotsford Walled Garden
We spent a few days in the Borders of Scotland last week, and paid a visit to Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott. They have a wonderful walled garden there, beautifully maintained by a team of volunteers. It is built in three sections: the formal South Court is the main entrance to the house, the sunken Morris garden and the extensive Kitchen garden.
The South Court is the most formal of the three with its cloister arches, corner turrets and a fine collection of antique stone panels lining the walls. This garden is the main entrance to the house. The cloister arches are beautiful and underplanted with a bed of hollyhocks and roses, but my favourite part of the garden is Scott’s collection of stone panels set into the wall.
Some of them are from a Roman fort near Penrith, a few from the nearby Melrose Abbey, others from the medieval Mercat Cross in Edinburgh and there is also a selection of Indian panels, brought to Scott by friends in the Dutch East India Company. There is no planting on the walls of the South Court, instead he used them to showcase this wonderful collection.
The sunken Morris garden is mainly laid to lawn with beds around the edges. The main feature is the statue of Mr Morris (a character from his novel Rob Roy) but the beds are filled with geraniums, fuchsias, mignonette, pyracantha, variegated ivy and cotoneasters. The yews to either side of the gate were planted when Scott was alive in the early 1800s - his study in the house overlooks these gardens. This garden was designed to be a contemplative space, and it works well for that.
My favourite of the walled gardens is the Kitchen garden, with its mixture of flower, fruit tree and vegetable beds. The central pathway is flanked by flower borders with an interesting mix of native and more exotic plants: roses, anenomes, cosmos and red hot pokers all mixed up together. I am amazed that some of them survive Scotland’s cold, long winters. In Scott’s day they tried to heat the glass house and walls to mitigate against the Scottish weather, but not always successfully.
It was interesting to see the fan trained apple trees growing along the walkways. They train them in an unusual way: on a single stem with one branch out to each side, and then allow them to grow upwards in a fan. Seeing the different aged trees was really interesting, from the youngest (2-3 years old) to some of the oldest gnarliest specimens I have seen, all trained in the same manner. There is also a section of the garden with standalone (vs fan trained) trees, and surprisingly the trained trees seem to be much healthier and have more fruit.
There are vast beds of dahlias out in flower at the moment. The vegetable gardens are filled with late season produce: chards, squashes, artichokes. There are also herb gardens with a collection of different types of thistles. Even this late in the season there was plenty to see as we wandered around.
One of the walkways has a lovely rustic archway / pergola made up of salvaged wood from the garden. The criss-crossed branches provide a support for climbing roses which will look beautiful when it is filled with flowers in the summer and will show off the structure’s architecture in the winter when the branches are bare.
Abbotsford is an interesting destination for all the historical reasons, but the gardens are worthy of a visit in their own right. You can walk your dogs along the water meadows leading down to the banks of the River Tweed, with fabulous views back to the house. There is even a pebble beach - we came across a family picnicking on it. Or you can just explore these walled gardens and the lavender hedges surrounding the chapel. It is a beautiful place to spend some time.
