FRUITS OF LABOUR
With strong links to the Lorimer family, Kellie Castle’s planting scheme is a colourful combination of flowering plants, vegetables and soft fruit, discovers Antoinette Galbraith
The gardens at Kellie Castle in Fife are home to glorious blooms and a great crop of fruit and veg
Walk up the drive to Kellie Castle with the wind blowing off the Firth of Forth and the towers and turrets of the Scottish Renaissance castle rising dramatically through a screen of trees, and the clock turns back 200 years. Mown grass paths draw your eye towards the unchanged view over the Firth towards the Bass Rock and the East Lothian coast. In the woodland below the castle lies a pond fed by the Kellie Burn.
Perhaps it was this exact sight that captivated Professor James Lorimer and his family in 1870 when they discovered the castle while walking on the East Neuk of Fife. Instantly smitten, the professor negotiated a lease from Kellie’s owner, the Earl of Mar, and work began on reclaiming the leaky structure from the rooks and owls nesting in its chimneys.
In the early days the Lorimer family used the castle during the summer but moved in fulltime eight years later and began undertaking major works. They were finally able to buy the property in 1948 but 22 years later rising costs forced them to offer the castle and its surrounding grounds to the National Trust for Scotland. Family links remain strong, however.
When he first embarked on his meticulously researched restoration project, Professor Lorimer could have had no idea that the work would inspire his youngest son Robert (1864-1929) and set him on the path to becoming one of Scotland’s most renowned architects and a leading proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement.
As a young man Lorimer experimented by designing the walled garden at Kellie Castle, where he avoided the construction of a grand walled garden at some distance from the house in favour of a smaller, more intimate design attached to the castle’s north elevation. Here the quirky stone outline of chimneys and crow-stepped gables form a striking backdrop from all angles.
Mark Armour, head NTS gardener for Fife, works at Kellie two days a week, where he manages the garden organically with the help of gardener Andy Adams, produce gardener Diane Barrie and a skilled team of dedicated volunteers, including Audrey who ‘likes seeing the garden change through the seasons, planting, pruning, learning and meeting people’. Kellie was one of the first NTS gardens to go organic, says Mark. As a result, the bird and general wildlife have flourished but there are pests that require management.
Lorimer experimented by designing the walled garden at Kellie Castle
A graduate of Elmwood College in Fife who ‘learned on the job under various head gardeners’, Mark aims to retain the original atmosphere of the garden while ensuring practical introductions to keep the scheme fresh and interesting. A tight budget, he says, is supplemented by fundraising activities such as concerts and Apple Week in October.
Entered through a narrow wooden gate tucked into the west wall, the 1.5-acre site unfolds in an elegant display of classical lines radiating from a central axis bisected with horizontal paths. All paths, including the perimeter path, are edged with box, the structure of which retains plants while allowing them to flourish naturalistically.
But what stands out here is Lorimer’s clever introduction of black painted metal arches and swags that support plants and fruit trees while adding height and structure to the design. The metalwork also breaks the garden into screened but manageable spaces while retaining a sense of unity.
Key to the planting scheme is the combination of flowering plants, vegetables and soft fruit. This is immediately apparent on entering the garden when you walk past the soft fruit cage, where everything is clearly labelled with white markers, as is the case throughout the garden. ‘The cages are easy to move,’ Mark explains, ‘which is useful for crop rotation.’ The cage is also home to Nugget the Black Rock hen, who is now 15.
Blue and white are the dominant colours in the borders lining the central path where Mark ensures a riot of colour from delphinium and campanula. Other flowers in the borders include Verbena bonariensis, echinacea purpurea ‘ruby giant’ and Joe Pye weed eupatorium maculatum. White comes from the fragrant Jacobite rose, rosa alba maxima scrambling over
the arches. ‘The Jacobite rose was planted in gardens as a sign to royalists that this was a safe place to stay,’ says Mark.
Elsewhere, swags of roses include pink American pillar, soft pink rosa climbing ‘félicité et perpétue’ and vigorous rosa filipes ‘kiftsgate’. The free-draining soil, he adds, requires plenty of feed.
A central, accurate, time-keeping sun dial is sited directly opposite a green, Charles Rennie Mackintosh-inspired bench: a reminder that Lorimer and Mackintosh were contemporaries and worked together. The domestic theme central to the Arts and Crafts movement is perhaps most keenly felt in the vegetable areas and also in the number of espaliered plum and apple trees that back the central, horizontal path.
The fruit theme is reinforced in the orchard area, which offers an excellent view of Kellie Law. Originally used to grow vegetables, this is an area Mark hopes to restore one day but for now vegetables are grown in the rectangular side garden, laid out with stone paths.
Home to an astonishing 40 kinds of rhubarb, it also produces onions, potatoes and other varieties, many of which are on sale in the summer house in the south east corner of the garden.
Mark’s enthusiasm for his job, knowledge and love of Kellie will surely be an inspiration for anyone fortunate enough to take advantage of the two-year NTS-sponsored apprentice scheme starting this autumn.
‘Being a gardener is one of the best jobs in the world,’ says Mark. ‘One day you’re talking to the public, fixing machinery or clearing up after storm damage, the next you are thinking about pest and disease control, sowing, planting or pruning. You have to be able to react quickly.’
Not to mention managing a team and speaking to journalists.