Raising the horizons
Stone from a demolished mansion provided the foundations for this unusual rock garden
Lynda Crouch was presented with a blank canvas when she moved into her newbuild home in Perthshire 30 years ago. “I didn’t have any gardening knowledge and wasn’t really sure how to develop this south-facing half-acre of heavy clay soil,” she says. Then a derelict mansion that stood adjacent to the site was demolished and she was offered as much stone as she wanted for use in her garden.
Attending a meeting of the Scottish Rock Garden Club (SRGC) opened her eyes to her garden’s potential. “Rock garden enthusiast Ian Young was speaking about raised beds and advised us to never throw anything out,” Lynda says. “He told us to look at what you have and think outside the box. The very next day I went out into my garden with a very different frame of mind.”
Lynda realised that these boulders provided an opportunity to garden upwards and incorporate different types of soil to accommodate plants that wouldn’t relish her heavy clay. She continued to attend the SRGC meetings and visited nearby Branklyn Garden for inspiration. “I go as often as I can and the team are so helpful, pointing out unusual plants and explaining their preferred conditions,” she says. “I’ve now built up a great source of different specialist nurseries with
very knowledgeable staff who offer fantastic advice and usually stock these unusual plants.”
Lynda developed the site gradually, creating different raised bed areas and then tweaking the arrangements and the planting. “Some beds are dedicated to alpines, while in others I added shrubs and copper beech, birch, hornbeam and coniferous trees for height and structure then softened the effect with perennials and grasses,” she says. “I simply love experimenting in the garden and, if it looks good, that’s a bonus!”
A more open lawned area beside the house is framed with fairly shallow rock garden beds with a large topiary-edged circular bed planted with a mass of tall alliums providing a stately display in late spring.
In the areas beyond, the rockery beds become more pronounced and dramatic, with crisply mown grass and crushed slate paths meandering between the plantings and hedges and cascades of clematis providing sheltering boundaries. Ironwork obelisks, archways
and metal and driftwood sculptures lead the eye upwards and along the different rock garden areas, while troughs, containers and sleeper beds of alpines provide miniature echoes of the larger planting schemes. A growing collection of snowdrops, gifted by fellow SRGC members, and alpine bulbs herald the gardening year, followed by species tulips, purple and white alliums and white camassias dotted with aquilegias in almost every hue, purple-leaved honesty, azure-blue meconopsis and cerise-flowered hardy geraniums. Blowsy peonies, dramatic irises and richly-coloured roses provide eye-catching colour splashes with hostas and grasses augmenting the textural mix.
Plants such as candelabra primulas, Trollius europaeus (globeflower) and ligularia ‘Britt Marie Crawford’ flourish in the original heavy clay soil.
Lynda has discovered that the mansion, Gourdiehill, belonged to horticulturist Patrick Matthew, who