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34
Historic Gardens 2010
BCD Special Report
Conservation
and Design
Two Historic Garden Case Studies
Robert Grant
N
early 80 years after its establishment,
the National Trust for Scotland
(NTS) is responsible for many of the
country’s most important historic buildings,
collections, gardens and wild habitats. Seventy
of the trust’s 128 properties include large or
small gardens, 35 of which constitute major
gardens and designed landscapes. They
surround the great landed Scottish castles and
country houses held in trust for the nation.
NTS first became involved in garden
conservation a year after its founding in
1931. With the financial support of its first
legacy, the trust purchased Culross Palace
in the Royal Burgh of Culross (pronounced
Cooross), Fife. Overlooking the Firth of Forth,
it is not really a palace at all but earned its
name because it was the grandest dwelling in
the village at the time of its construction in
the late 16th century. The trust’s engagement
with this property was, however, short-lived.
The trust was then unable to care for it and
the property was passed into the guardianship
of the Ministry of Works (now Historic
Scotland), which managed the building and
its adjacent garden for the next 60 years.
It wasn’t until 1945 that the trust looked
at gardens again when the 5th Marquess of
Ailsa and the Kennedy family gifted Culzean
Castle (pronounced Cullain) to the trust.
The castle stands on the Ayrshire coast and
has 146ha (350 acres) of picturesque gardens
and designed landscape. That same year
the Hon Mrs Henrietta Leith-Hay gifted
Leith Hall, Aberdeenshire to the trust,
including its Arts and Crafts style garden,
which she and her husband had created
in the early years of the 20th century.
By the mid 1950s NTS had acquired
11 garden properties which, while managed
on a day-to-day basis by garden staff, were
overseen by a gardens adviser whose role it
was to ensure holistic management across
the developing portfolio and to agree on
appropriate forms of garden conservation.
Bequeaths and acquisitions continued to
grow, and with a collection of major gardens
and designed landscapes now standing at 35,
the trust has established a dedicated team
of gardens advisers. The team is led by the
head of gardens and designed landscapes
whose responsibility it is to help research and
understand the significance of the gardens
in a local, regional and national context
and to develop conservation management
plans guided by detailed survey and
analysis in line with the trust’s conservation
principles. The process of evaluation has
evolved since the 1950s in tandem with
a developing national interest in garden
history and a wider appreciation of the
potential loss of horticultural heritage.
The trust made a sterling effort in the early
1950s to research, understand and evaluate
contemporary schemes for the newly acquired
Pitmedden Garden in Aberdeenshire, where the
great double-walled garden with its ogee-roofed
pavilions was recognised as being of national
significance. While the estate records that might
have shown the original 17th-century layout
were lost in a fire of 1828, a new parterre
garden was created by the trust based on
contemporary designs of the gardens at the
Palace of Holyrood House in Edinburgh dating
from 1647. Today the iconic Scottish garden
at Pitmedden is internationally respected and
represents an outstanding example of a 1950s
interpretation of a 17th-century garden design.
Despite relative successes in understanding
and valuing garden heritage in its early days
of garden management, the trust failed to
recognise the significance and cultural value
of other important landscape features that
have since been lost. Acknowledging this
as a significant factor in the organisation’s
garden management process, a much more
comprehensive system for garden study,
evaluation and management planning
now exists. This includes archaeological
investigation, building survey, contour and
tree mapping, together with a more rigorous
evaluation leading to statements of significance.
Culross Palace
Culross Palace and garden were re-acquired
by the trust in 1991. A three-year garden
restoration programme followed, which
converted a simple amenity site into Scotland’s
most authentic model 17th-century garden.
The village of Culross dates back to the 6th
century when it was an important religious
centre. The monks were the first coal-miners
in the area and over many centuries the
mining industry thrived here. Ships carried
coal and salt to Scandinavia and the Low
Countries, often returning with ballasts of
red pan-tiles, which are today a distinctive
feature of the village. This exchange probably
brought more than roof coverings: ideas about
gardening and other cultural pursuits must
have crossed the North Sea with them.
The early history of gardening is poorly
documented: the first Scottish gardening
‘Step-over’ trained apple, ‘Tower of Glamis’ at Fyvie Castle (All photos: Robert Grant)