WOODLAND WONDERLAND
GILL MURRAY’S RESTORED VICTORIAN VILLA STANDS IN 10 ACRES OF ANCIENT TREES, ORCHARDS AND STUNNING LANDSCAPE, WHICH ARE AT THEIR DRAMATIC BEST IN THE SCOTTISH AUTUMN
The trees in this Perthshire garden shimmer red and gold
Even
though it is close to the city of Perth and only a few minutes from the motorway to Edinburgh, Easter Dunbarney is a peaceful place, surrounded by fields and with distant views of wooded hills. Gill and Keith Murray bought the Victorian villa 10 years ago, and it has made a spacious and welcoming family home for them and their two small boys, Fraser and Struan. Around it lies a tranquil woodland garden that the whole family loves and in which Gill finds inspiration for her growing career in photography.
Before coming here, the Murrays lived in Edinburgh, in a modern development with a small low-maintenance garden. What Easter Dunbarney offered was something else entirely. Its 10-acre garden, created more than a century ago, bowled them over when they first saw it. ‘It was absolutely beautiful,’ recalls Gill. ‘The previous owners were both very invested in it and worked in it themselves, as well as having a gardener. They sourced a lot of unusual plants that we still have now.’
For a long time after the Murrays bought Easter Dunbarney, however, the garden had to wait while they undertook a massive renovation, redoing electricity and gas and knocking down walls. ‘For the first year the house was our priority, just to get the space right and everything decorated once the works had been done,’ says Gill. Only then was there time to start thinking about the garden.
It had by no means been running wild. Keith’s father owns the nearby estate and his two gardeners had brought in big machines for the grass and to keep bushes trimmed back. But, when Gill took stock a few seasons in, she realised she and Keith needed help of
their own: ‘Someone with time to focus on the garden, to bring it back and develop it.’ Enter Adrian Miles, a horticulturalist who looks after several gardens in the area, including that of his partner, David Buchanan-cook at Helensbank in Fife. Recommended by another client, he now comes to Easter Dunbarney with an assistant one day a week and, bit by bit, has cleared and pruned, propagated and planted to rejuvenate the garden and keep standards high.
A lot of his effort has gone into the front of the house, where a mixed border ourishes in the warmth of the south-facing stone wall. Many of the old shrubs and climbers had grown too large, so Adrian has pruned them back and made space for more of the owers Gill loves, including, at this time of year, glowing dahlias, alstroemerias and penstemons that linger on until the frost catches them.
In the woodland, he has cleared undergrowth from around trees and stripped the rock on which the teahouse stands, allowing its theatrical form to be seen more clearly. In the process, he has often connected with the garden’s past by unearthing old plant labels, but occasionally in more surprising ways as well. ‘In one place, he found a little circular pet cemetery with stone headstones dating from the 1920s,’ says Gill, ‘not far off 100 years ago! I stood there and it occurred to me that these people, with their family dogs, would have looked around 360 degrees and seen exactly what
I’m seeing today. The hills are the same, the views are the same. And we found it the day that our old dog, Harvey, had died and was being buried in another spot, which was a bit spooky!’
Adrian devotes much of his time to the greenhouse and vegetable patch, supplying owers for the borders as well as
fruit and vegetables for Gill’s food blog: chillies and tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, courgettes and potatoes. Gill worked as a surveyor in Edinburgh, but always loved photography and has turned her hobby into a job in recent years, fitting it around the needs of her young family.
Food photography has become a particular passion and Gill now provides a weekly recipe on a blog for a Perth website, Small City, Big Personality. ‘It usually involves creating a dish that is seasonal and local. I try to use my own produce, or local farm shop produce – just whatever Perthshire is growing at the time,’ she says.
Her woodland garden is a constant source of inspiration and the orchard a rich seam of fresh fruit. The ageing apple trees in it are next on Adrian’s list to receive some concentrated attention. Other high priorities are the hydrangea patch, much loved by Gill, and the quarry garden – a sheltered spot behind the teahouse that has the air of a Japanese water garden. The water system is off at the moment for the boys’ safety, but damp-loving plants – hostas, Solomon’s seal and giant rodgersias – still thrive.
The teahouse itself – a delightful antique that can be rotated to catch the sun – is also in need of some renovation. ‘It’s watertight, but it could do with a once-over from the joiner,’ says Gill. In the meantime, as she says, ‘It’s a great place to go and sit, and just feel peaceful. The views are phenomenal and the colours are utterly beautiful. People talk about a winter wonderland – for me, this is a woodland wonderland.’
SEE GILL’S PHOTOGRAPHS AT GILLMURRAYPHOTOGRAPHY.COM AND ENJOY HER SEASONAL RECIPES AT SMALLCITYBIGPERSONALITY.CO.UK.