Inveresk Lodge Garden, near Musselburgh, East Lothian

Inveresk Lodge garden

We were on our way to visit a friend who lives near Dunbar in East Lothian, it was a gorgeous morning and the roads were amazingly empty, so as we had plenty of time we decided to stop off at Inveresk Lodge Garden, a National Trust place on the way.

Inveresk Lodge garden

The house isn’t open to the public, in fact when we went in we stumbled upon the people who live in the lodge sitting in the garden having their morning coffee. It must be wonderful to live somewhere like that and not to have to worry about doing the garden.

Inveresk Lodge garden

Can you believe we had the whole place to ourselves, I don’t think many people visit it, especially midweek in September, so that’s obviously the best time to go.

Inveresk Lodge garden

Health and Safety have probably insisted that they put in these metal railings to stop people from falling, but it’s a shame as they do detract from the stone steps.

Inveresk Lodge garden

I took loads of photos so I’ll be doing another few posts on this garden, I’m sure. We’ll definitely be going back for another visit in the future – in another season. Apart from anything else I just learned from reading the Wiki link to the lodge that the portrait painter Archibald Skirving died at Inveresk Lodge, and he was some sort of distant far flung, probably off at a tangent relation of mine.

Inveresk Lodge garden

Geilston Garden/ National Trust/ Argyll and Bute

Geilston Garden

Last Saturday we had to go to an old friend’s memorial service in Dumbarton. It’s a two hour drive from where we live now so after the service we decided to make the most of being over in my beloved west of Scotland and go to take a look at nearby Geilston Garden which is near Cardross, Argyll and Bute. It’s one of those places that we never got around to visiting in all the years that we lived nearby. It’s owned by The National Trust, but it’s just the gardens they own, there’s no house to go around. Despite the fact that it was October there’s still a decent amount of colour around as you can see.

Geilston Garden
That large leaf in the photo above is a Rodgersia I’m sure, I just planted one in my own garden a few weeks ago and I hope it’s a smaller version of that one.

Geilston Garden

I took the photo below of what is a mystery shrub to me, meaning to try to identify it using my RHS plant book. I haven’t got around to doing that yet though. It’s a very nice plant anyway and I’d like to track one down.

Geilston Garden

I love the shape of the conifer below, I have no idea exactly what this tree is though. I loved Geilston and my only gripe is that I couldn’t find many plant labels there, I like to note names down if I don’t know what they are.

Geilston Garden

There are a fair number of Acers at Geilston, mind you I think that you can never have too many of them. The colours are always gorgeous although best in the autumn of course, but they even look great in the winter when it’s their naked shapes which are beautiful.

Geilston Garden

If you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Dumbarton/Cardross/Helensburgh you should definitely make time to visit Geilston Garden. The chap at the entrance was very friendly and there were freshly picked vegetables and flowers for sale which were very tasty.

You can see lots more images of Geilston Garden at various different times of the year here.