Garden of the Week
Inspirational design and plant-packed borders for year-round interest make this Edinburgh garden shine
Dug McLeod has been designing gardens in the Edinburgh area for over 20 years. He trained under two landscape architects, one a plantsman and one a designer. “I carried on when they retired,” he says, “but I’ve always been interested in gardening because my mum used to open her garden when I was a child.”
Larkfield was a modern house, designed to merge in with Edinburgh’s Georgian architecture, and the owners, who’d had a much larger garden in Dorset, asked Dug to redesign their garden after admiring his work in a neighbour’s plot.
The small, city space was uninspiring, with a straight concrete path, a lawn and some decking close to the house. “Although the garden was a blank canvas, it was a real challenge,” Dug explains. “I had to rework the ground and add extra topsoil because the ground was full of builders’ rubble. The concrete path was in completely the wrong place, so it had to be broken up and I used it for hardcore.”
The decking was left in place, but the lawn was removed. Once the entire garden had been dug over and green waste added, Dug started to fulfil the owner’s brief. They wanted to create an outdoor space for entertaining and have a summerhouse for when the Scottish weather wasn’t being kind. They also wanted a range of plants to shine throughout the year.
“The one thing my clients vetoed was bamboo, because it had been very rampant in their old garden in Dorset. I persuaded them to plant two bamboos, having assured them that they wouldn’t be invasive in Edinburgh!”
The golden-stemmed bamboo, Phyllostachys
aurea, is planted in a large container. However, there’s a black-stemmed bamboo,
Phyllostachys nigra, sited against the cream summerhouse and it’s planted straight into the ground. The winter stems are stunning and the foliage is also attractive because it casts a gentle pattern of light and shade. “The black-stem form needs a pale background, otherwise the stems get lost against the soil,” Dug says.
The garden sloped up and away from the sandstone house and Dug didn’t want to create steps, so he used a meandering path to create an illusion of space. “It makes the garden feel much larger and you can also access different areas and look at the plants close up.”
The owners wanted to create a lush, woodland feel because this area of Edinburgh is close to Trinity Park where there are lots of mature trees.
“The owners liked conifers and these make wonderful winter evergreens. They were particularly fond of junipers; perhaps they reminded them of home.”
The slender, upright juniper,
Juniperus scopulorum
‘Skyrocket’, has glaucous foliage so it’s surrounded with silverleaved plants. The five conifers planted in the original scheme, all slow growing, come alive in winter. The cloud-pruned Pinus
nigra adds an Oriental touch and the Japanese acer, next to the pine, adds a warm blast of fiery colour in spring and autumn.
Evergreens also play a major part and Clematis armandii helps to soften the very necessary fence needed for privacy. In spring there are clusters of scented, almost-waxy flowers. Dug also used the non-prickly mahonia, ‘Soft Caress’, for its Continues over the page
divided, evergreen foliage. Two espalier apple trees camouflage the fence furthest from the house and tall airy plants, such as Verbena bonariensis and Miscanthus sinensis create an airy screen along the edges without cutting out light. “The westfacing aspect makes the centre of the garden quite sunny,” Dug explains. “There’s lots of light at the height of the day and in the long summer evenings.”
The shadiest area is behind the summerhouse and a hazel screen, partly covered in a climbing rose, screens the recycling bins which are accessed via a hidden straight path right on the garden’s edge.
A climbing hydrangea provides delicate white flowers and green foliage and an evergreen grass-like plant, Luzula nivea, and a dainty blue woodlander, Brunnera macrophylla, also thrive in deep shade. The owners, keen gardeners themselves, ring the changes with containers throughout the seasons.
This Edinburgh garden might be tiny, but it’s an inspiration that shows how important outdoor space can be when it’s planted for year-round interest.