Branklyn Garden, Perth, Scotland – part 1

Posted on 11 June 2021 by Katrina

Earlier this week we visited Branklyn Garden in Perth which is a smallish garden, just two acres, which is owned by the Scottish National Trust. It’s a lovely place and has some gorgeous plants, it’s especially scenic at this time of the year with all the acers, rhododendrons, azaleas and Himalayan poppies in flower at the moment.

There are some wee winding paths through the acers/Japanese maples, but there are wider paths too.

The orange coloured flowers are particularly striking. I think these are azaleas rather than rhododendrons.

But the primulas and meconopsis are putiing on a great display at the moment too.

I think you’ll agree that the acer below is contributing a lot of colour too, with it’s zingy citrus shade and the red of its seed pods.

This garden is like a slice of heaven, the only thing which mars it is the sound of traffic from the nearby road below it. Obviously when the original owners of the garden built their house and garden in this location the traffic was a lot lighter.

There is a small stream which runs through part of the garden, but I’ll leave the photos of that to another post. It was just so lovely to get out and about and do something quite normal but certainly different from sitting at home as we have had to do for so long, and it felt safe.

Branklyn Garden, Perth, Scotland – part 2

Posted on 10 July 2020 by Katrina

Here we are back at Branklyn Garden in Perth again, it was the first day of its opening again after the Covid-19 lockdown was being slowly eased in Scotland. We were all glad to see some different scenery I’m sure.

There were quite a lot of people there but it was still fairly easy to lose yourself among the plants and take photos without other people being in the background.

Sadly I couldn’t see any fish in the pond, I suspect that if they put any in there they would be fodder for some kind of birds, possibly a heron. This garden is a short distance from the River Tay, where there are plenty of seabirds around.

I wish I could remember the name of the red flowered climber below, I have a feeling that it’s an annual but I can’t find any images of one like it. That’s one grouse I have about Branklyn, the plants aren’t always labelled. Probably they were all well labelled originally but the plants have engulfed them as they grew.

You can just get a glimpse of the house that the original owners of the garden lived in in the photo below. This is now a Scottish National Trust property but the house is used as a holiday rental so you can’t look around it.

There are some cracking acers/Japanese Maples in this garden. So many people love them but aren’t able to grow them although they’re not that pernickety really, having said that some of mine got damaged by an air frost in May, just as the new growth was looking so good.

It was a sunny day and the sun shining through the top of the acer below was quite something, but the photo doesn’t really capture the moment.

Branklyn Garden, Perth, Scotland – part 1

Posted on 7 July 2020 by Katrina

From Saturday we in Scotland were allowed to travel further than five miles (unless for food shopping) for the first time since the lockdown began in early March. So we took the opportunity to visit Branklyn Garden in Perth, on the way to visiting family thirty miles away from us. As you can see from the three photos above Branklyn has some lovely acers/Japanese maples.

This type of cherry tree bark just keeps getting better every year.

Below is a photo of delphiniums (I think) and an unusual Rhododendron with the new growth being coloured a sort of pale orange.

Quite a few other people had had the same idea and I was surprised to see that the cafe was open, (but only for sitting outdoors.) Things felt almost normal – almost but not quite. There were masks and hand sanitiser at the entrance, but we had brought our own.

The garden is set in about two acres and dates from 1922 when this hillside orchard plot was bought by a couple who wanted to build an Arts and Crafts house there surrounded by a garden which has lots of winding paths around gorgeous planting.

Nowadays Branklyn Garden is owned by the Scottish National Trust. Sadly it was opened up just too late for us to admire the great banks of Himalayan Meconopsis, there were just a few stray petals left on them, not worth photographing. I was pleased to capture this fleeting butterfly though, I think it’s a tortoiseshell although I have no idea what the shrub is called.

Broughton House, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland

Posted on 4 October 2019 by Katrina

Way back in May 2018 we visited Broughton House and Garden in Kirkcudbright (pronounced Kirkcoodbry, which is in Dumfries and Galloway. It was owned by the Scottish artist E.A. Hornel. You can read about him here and see some of his artworks, and read more about him here.

It was a busy place when we were there so I wasn’t able to get much in the way of photos of the garden, but this lilac tree was at its best while we were there.

The house is now owned by the Scottish National Trust and there are quite a few of his artworks on view there and if you’re interested you can see more images of his work here.

Kirkcaldy Art Gallery always has a few of his paintings on display. The one below is a favourite with many but I find it a bit twee for my taste.

Hornel

Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Posted on 5 December 2018 by Katrina

Towards the end of October we had a few days away in Aberdeenshire, the north east of Scotland, just for a change of scene, again we were very lucky with the weather. One of the castles that we visited was Fyvie Castle, as you can see it’s rather imposing and with its pepperpot turrets it has been influenced by French chateaux rather than the more brutal architecture of many English castles.

Fyvie Castle is now a Scottish National Trust property. It started its life as a royal castle though and Alexander II stayed here in 1222. There’s been a castle here since about 1200 but that one was probably just made of wood. By 1296 when the English King Edward I visited the castle while doing his worst to Scotland it was built of stone and over the years it has changed a lot, being constantly extended by the generations of owners.

This castle is fully furnished, quite sumptuous in parts and luckily nowadays visitors are allowed to photograph most of the rooms, but I’ll leave the interior for another blogpost.

The castle design is now Scots Baronial as many of the previous occupants seemed to have a penchant for adding their own towers, it’s quite elegant I think.

Holmwood House, Glasgow

Posted on 28 November 2017 by Katrina

I thought I had already done a post on Holmwood House in Glasgow, but it seems I haven’t, I must have just written it in my head but got no further than that! Anyway …

The large circular window is the drawing room, where the very ornate ceiling in my last post is located.

Holmwood House was designed by Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson. He was heavily influenced by Greek architecture hence his name. Sadly there aren’t that many of his buildings still standing, over the years lots have been demolished for various reasons including neglect to the point of them nearly falling down.

Holmwood must have been a fairly comfortable family home in its day, it only has four bedrooms so despite its grand appearance it should have been fairly easy to deal with from a housekeeping point of view. Presumably they had a butler though as there is a butler’s pantry. At some point there was a fire in this room so the wall tiles aren’t original but they look like they must have been put up around the 1930s to me, I really like the design, it’s very fresh looking, almost art deco although the top border is pure Victorian, acanthus leaves.

The gates also have an acanthus leaves design on them, as well as that sort of pared down Greek key design which also features on the stonework of the house.

The photos below are of the vegetable garden, with the coach house in the background. It has some of the same architectural details of the main house. You might be able to see that there are puddles in the garden, that’s how bad our summer was!

House of Dun near Montrose – interior

Posted on 28 August 2017 by Katrina

It’s a few weeks now since we visited the House of Dun near Montrose, you can see the post that I did about the exterior of the building here. It was built in 1730 for the laird David Erskine.

This is a house that you can only go around as part of a guided tour, but they seem to be fairly frequent so we didn’t have to wait all that long to be shown around. It’s a shame that one of the owners married a woman who liked to tinker with the internal plan of the house. It was of course designed by William Adam who was a fanatic about having everything symmetrical, even creating dummy doors to match actual doors at opposite ends of walls. A previous occupant has ruined a lot of the proportions by having walls removed and such, especially in the hall.

I keep saying this but it’s true – although it’s a very grand house, it still has the feeling of a family home. It must be all the personal nick-nacks that decorate the place that help.

It was impossible to get a photo of the huge looking glass without getting people in it!

The cornicings/plaster wall and ceiling decorations are incredibly ornate as you can see.

Apparently the overmantel decoration is of a soldier standing with one foot crushing the crown of England. Not terribly subtle, apparently the house was owned by Jacobites who enjoyed this sort of visual support for the Jacobite cause and they got away with it, at a time when they could easily have been executed for such sympathies!

The embroidered quilt on this four-poster bed is fantastic. It was apparently found in a tin trunk in the attics fairly recently. It was a wedding gift embroidered by the mother of the then laird and it has his and his mother’s name sewn all over it, and the fact that it was a gift from her for his wedding. It’s suspected that his bride didn’t want to have her mother-in-law at such close quarters, even if only in the shape of embroidery and I have to say I don’t really blame her.

Lastly, just about the most bizarre object at the House of Dun is the ‘boot’ bath below, so named because it resembles the shape of a boot. I can’t make up my mind whether it was enclosed like that to keep out draughts or just to make it a more private experience for the bather. I don’t think it would have made washing your legs and feet very easy though!

House of Dun, near Montrose

Posted on 20 August 2017 by Katrina

One beautiful day a couple of weeks ago we decided to grab the good weather and drive up to the House of Dun close to Montrose. It’s a Scottish National Trust property that we had never visited before. It’s just over 50 miles away from us. Below are some photographs of the outside from various angles.

The house was originally owned by the Erskine family.

The gardens are meticullously maintained, I hate to think how many hours it all must take.

As you can see from the plaque below, it was laid by the Queen Mother to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the birth of the house’s architect William Adam. He was the father of three famous architects, the most famous being Robert Adam.

The pergola below looks lovely now but it will look even better when the plants have covered all of the metal support. It is of course in the shape of a crown. The owners of the House of Dun were closet Jacobites and there are various not very well hidden decorations in the house featuring the Scottish crown.

The photo below of the box hedging was taken from the top of the house steps, the back door really. The setting is fantastic with beautiful views from the house.

You can actually rent holiday cottages and I think apartments in the actual house. It would be great – if the weather behaved itself. Crucially there is a good tea room!

Hurrah! the National Trust now allow people to take photographs of the inside of their properties, but I’ll keep those ones for the next blogpost.

Preston Mill and Phantassie Doocot, East Lothian

Posted on 25 September 2014 by Katrina

The week before we went to the Netherlands we visited Preston Mill and Phantassie Doocot in East Lothian. They are Scottish National Trust properties. The mill is a really interesting place to look around, in fact I hadn’t expected to enjoy it so much. The doocot is still in use as a dovecot and you can’t see inside it but we walked along to it from the mill, it was a gorgeous day for a stroll and there’s a nice river to look at. Apparently there are kingfishers there but we didn’t see any.

The drying area of the mill is especially quirky, as you can see it resembles a witch’s hat, it looks as if it should be part of a film set, the house of a hobbit or something. You can read more about it here.

In fact the guide told us that the place has been the location for some filming of Outlander, but I’ve never seen it. Culross in Fife is also used as a location. I’m going to have to start watching Outlander so that I can spot the locations.

Below is the doocot, the strangest one I’ve ever seen.

Although there is no flour milled nowadays they are running all the machinery so that you can see exactly how it all worked. I had no idea that mills were so complicated, the whole thing is very Heath Robinson-ish but it works.

The mill has a long history of being flooded and it was only after it was flooded badly in 1959 that the miller called it a day and decided to pass the mill on to the Scottish National Trust. Below is the water wheel which runs all the machinery.

If you go to visit you should make time to take the walk around the nearby fields. We were lucky enough to see a heron flying off the river right in front of us, he flew into the adjacent field to eat the fish which he had just caught.

I took the last photo looking back towards the doocot. It all seems so long ago but it was only just over a month ago that we visited these places, it’s just that we’ve done so much in between then and now, and I have such a huge backlog of blogposts. This is a lovely part of East Lothian, although nothing as scenic as the west of course!

Pining for the West

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Tag Archives: Scottish National Trust

Branklyn Garden, Perth, Scotland – part 1

Branklyn Garden, Perth, Scotland – part 2

Branklyn Garden, Perth, Scotland – part 1

Broughton House, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland

Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Holmwood House, Glasgow

House of Dun near Montrose – interior

House of Dun, near Montrose

Preston Mill and Phantassie Doocot, East Lothian