Gardens

CASTLE Ayrshire Now here’s a storybook setting. Culzean Castle sits on the craggy clifftops of the Ayrshire coastline, gazing out across the Firth of Clyde. The fortress itself is a vision of turrets and crenelations, a stronghold still stuffed with treasures and stories. When the makers of cult 1970s film The Wicker Man were looking for somewhere grand and brooding to serve as the castle of Lord Summerisle, Christopher Lee’s character, this is where they chose. You can understand why.

In many ways, however, it’s pipped as a spectacle by the 260-hectare estate that surrounds it. Thick belts of mixed woodland stretch across the grounds, with conifers and beech trees both dominant, providing the perfect habitat for everything from red deer and tawny owls to hares and woodpeckers. Down on the seafront, meanwhile, the cliffs plunge down to a coastline pocked with natural caves.

It’s a wonderful estate to walk around, not only for its wooded areas but for the more manicured elements. These include a swan pond, an 18th-century pagoda, glasshouses and a large walled garden, where willow sculptures share the space with fruit trees and beds of fresh produce. There’s even an ersatz ruined arch, meant to represent the fact that the family who first commissioned the castle, the Kennedys, have a long lineage.

There are, in total, some 40 buildings and follies scattered around the park – adding to the sense of it being part forest, part working estate and part pleasure palace – with particular mention going to the area known as Home Farm, where the cow byres and piggeries of yesteryear have been converted into a modern gift shop and café.

& GARDENS Sutherland The Palace of Versailles lies some 900 miles away from the rumpled folds of the Northern Highlands, but you feel its presence here nonetheless. When Dunrobin Castle’s stunning grounds were laid out in 1850 by architect Sir Charles Barry – whose CV also includes the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament – Versailles’ luxuriant grounds served as inspiration.

Despite the gardens’ location above the wet and wild Moray Firth, they were designed to be sheltered, resulting in an astonishing array of plants both native and introduced, among them scarlet hawthorns, topiarised whitebeams and a South American rhubarb specimen with eight foot leaves.

But what’s growing here is just half the story. With a layout that incorporates fountains, parterres and even a croquet lawn, the Versailles influence is thick – something helped, of course, by the presence of a whopping great Disney castle overlooking the whole thing. Louis XIV, eat your heart out.

Depending on when you time your visit, you might encounter displays of tulips, dahlia, Californian lilies or even Mexican orange blossom. Just off the main parterre, meanwhile, is an area dedicated to falconry displays, with peregrines and Harris hawks swooping within feet of the garden’s quince and lime trees.

Sir Charles’ original vision is largely intact, almost 175 years after it was first conceived, although the castle’s current gardeners have introduced some impressive innovations of their own, including eye-catching pyramidal plant supports and an avenue of Tuscan laurels.

The whole place was actually requisitioned as a naval hospital in World War One and later spent seven years as a boys’ boarding school. Happily, it’s now very much open to the public.

GARDENS Perthshire Sitting pretty on the slopes of the sweeping Strathtay Valley, the Cluny House Gardens were started in the 1950s by Bobby and Betty Masterson, a far-sighted couple with a special interest in Himalayan flora. They set about planting primulas, lilies, trilliums and meconopsis, as well as various shrubs and specimen trees. Decades later, when the Mastersons passed away, their daughter and her husband took up the running of the gardens, continuing to nurture and cultivate the site with the same care and attention.

That’s the history. The result of their collective toil is a gem of a garden – a peaceful, secluded woodland hideaway set across six scenic acres, with a stone farmhouse at its heart and red squirrels in its branches. Stoats and pine martens dwell in the undergrowth, and birds as varied as nuthatches, sparrowhawks and coal tits can be spotted too.

On a larger scale, two huge sequoias stand tallest among the garden’s many conifers, while large Tibetan cherry trees bring a splash of seasonal colour. Some of its Himalayan lilies, meanwhile, tower to a height of over four metres. Together with the myriad other plants on site, they provide year-round interest, from snowdrops pushing through the soil over winter to spindle tree berries and Chinese honeysuckle in late autumn.

The garden is small compared to some but has a hefty reputation, something which saw it awarded the Queen Mother Memorial Medal from the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society, in recognition of outstanding service to Scottish horticulture. Adding further to its appeal is the fact the whole garden is planted and sustained on organic principles – proof, were it needed, that chemicals don’t need to play a part in creating somewhere truly special. Note that there’s a cash-only £5 entrance fee.

& GARDENS Isle of Skye The ancient coastal home of the Clan Donald, at virtually the southern tip of the Isle of Skye, provides the unforgettable setting for this 40-acre spread of castle ruins, handsome gardens and roaming woodland. Benefitting from a sheltered, flora-friendly microclimate – not to mention wide views across the waves of the Sound of Sleat – the grounds were first laid out in the 1790s and remain in fine fettle over 230 years later.

It’s telling, in fact, that while the castle itself is now reduced to photogenic ruins – despite being constructed only in 1815, complete with a great marble staircase – the gardens themselves have stood the test of time. Bluebells, rhododendrons and orchids are here in abundance over spring and summer, while the Victorian arboretum flames with colour over autumn.

No less impressively, the gardening team here have also embarked on a Trees for the Future programme, protecting some of the planet’s most

Adding to the overall spectacle, various specially commissioned sculptures are dotted around the grounds, with young visitors routinely making a beeline for The Homecoming, a bronze statue depicting a pair of perky-eared, shaggy-coated Skye Terriers on their namesake isle.

The history of the estate, of course, is very much a pull in its own right. Clan Donald chiefs settled here in a much older house back in 1650, and the mansion that still abuts the castle ruins was built in 1790, at the time the gardens were laid out. Over the centuries, various pivotal figures from Scottish history have made their way here, not least Flora MacDonald – helper of Bonnie Prince Charlie – who married here.