RIOTOUS & ROMANTIC
A profusion of spring flowers set against dramatic topiary conjures floral mayhem in this magical garden in Fife
Spring blooms provide fabulous displays against statuesque spires of topiary in this Fife garden
High above the Firth of Forth and surrounded by wind-blown fields crammed with neat rows of arable crops, a tree-lined drive leads to Glassmount House. At first, its lawns and mature trees seem unremarkable, but cross the gravel drive in front of the imposing property, push your way through the heavy metal-panelled door into the walled garden and you enter another world, a place that calls to mind the enchanted gardens of children’s literature. A profusion of plants threatens to overwhelm the paths. The pale torso of a Greek god framed by temple ruins is magicked into being from a polystyrene shop dummy and pieces of wood. Walls are all but invisible, giving the sense that the garden might go on for ever, and striking images coalesce out of the chaos only to dissolve again when the light changes. It feels dream-like, strange – you expect to see the Cheshire Cat materialise, smiling down from its perch in a tree swathed in climbing roses.
Irene Thomson moved to Glassmount in the mid-1970s, with her mother, brother James and four young children. “I’d been living down on the coast but wanted a bigger plot and, although the house looked a bit spooky, we peeped over the wall into the garden and liked what we saw,” she recalls. For a long time, Irene just maintained what was mostly grass, plus a big hedge through the walled garden and some cherry trees. But when she retired from running an antiques shop in Edinburgh in 2003, she
“started digging”. “After about seven years, it was out of control, and I’ve been trying to quell the mutiny ever since,” she says.
Cultivated over many decades, the soil in the sheltered walled garden is fertile and easy to work, and mostly free-draining, except for an area at the bottom end where there are underground springs – ideal conditions for spring-flowering plants that love rich, moisture-retentive soils. To begin with, Irene planted anything and everything she could get hold of to fill the big spaces between the network of paths she created. “I got plants from friends and then started buying a few things after seeing them elsewhere, but it was all on a very small budget. My first candelabra primula seed was a gift from the father of a friend of mine, George Taylor, who had been head of Kew Gardens. Nowadays, James goes plant hunting at local garden centres and I work with what he brings home.”
In late spring, candelabra primulas in pinks, oranges and yellows, the papery electric-blue meconopsis and statuesque
Himalayan lilies, Cardiocrinum giganteum, erupt into bloom in the damp part of the garden. The latter produce flower spikes up to two metres tall, stacked with creamy-white trumpet-shaped flowers with claret-stained throats and a vanilla scent. Unusual Senecio smithii features, too – another moisture lover with big white daisy flowers and bold, leathery leaves.
Clipped evergreens, white-barked Betula utilis var. jacquemontii and urns provide anchor points among the superabundance of plants, as do an assortment of structures, most of which were designed and built from recycled materials by Irene’s artist son, Peter Mclaren (petermclarenfineart.com). The teahouse on stilts came about when a friend gave Irene a spiral staircase: she decided to build a shed on top of it, which mutated into a light, airy teahouse, giving wonderful views. The most spectacular structure, however, is a rare Victorian pagoda-style conservatory built by Mackenzie & Moncur of Edinburgh, whose client list included Queen Victoria. With its lanterns, finials, stone-topped staging and decoratively tiled floor, it is, unsurprisingly, a listed building. “I adore it,” Irene says, “although it’s a worry because it needs constant repair that we don’t have the money for. But when you first see it, you really get the wow factor. The garden wouldn’t be the same without it.”
A painter by training, Irene sees the walled garden with an artist’s eye. “It needs everything you use to make a good painting: structure, rhythm, colour, tone and texture, but I don’t consciously plan it, apart from introducing upright plants to lead the eye.” A prodigious sower of seed, Irene has begun planting outside the walls, creating a striking flower meadow with both wild and garden plants on a sloping bank above one of the surrounding fields. It’s filled with foxgloves, honesty, delphiniums, teasels, meconopsis and campion, and Irene relishes the effect of the mass of multi-coloured flowers against the soft backdrop of the field.
Behind the conservatory, the grandly named topiary lawn, with its neatly cut coiled and spiralling conifers, provides respite from the busy planting elsewhere. “It’s nice to come into a quiet area after the mutiny; the contrast is good,” Irene says. “I clip the lower parts and Peter does the tops, as they have got so tall. I grew them all from sprigs.” She says that her garden “has gone weird by mistake”. And with the word’s hint of the supernatural, she might be right: weird and wonderful, this garden casts a delicious spell on all who enter.