A TROPICAL PARADISE
The Fernery at Ascog Hall has been given a new lease of life by current owners Michael and Karen Burke
When Michael and Karen Burke took on the Fernery at Ascog Hall, they set about reinstating its natural water cascade system and restocked some unusual varieties, finds Antoinette Galbraith
Walk down a flight of steps into the Fernery at Ascog Hall on the Isle of Bute and the clock turns back 150 years. Dating to the Victorian era when Bute was a particularly popular playground for Glaswegians, this jewel of a fernery – which is an astonishing ten feet below ground – is a unique example of the excitement generated at the time by exotic imports, especially ferns.
Gravel paths wind between a miniature forest of ferns in different shapes, sizes, textures and shades of green. There are ferns from the temperate zones of Chile, New Zealand and South Africa, while Australia is represented by Dicksonia antarctica with its thick brown trunk and textured fronds, varieties of the tree fern Cyathea and the showpiece of the collection, the ‘Thousand Year Old Fern’, Todea Barbara. Water drips down a rocky cascade and the whole ensemble is carefully watched over by a statue of the Goddess Hebe. Michael and Karin Burke, who first came here in 2014, were also instantly captivated by this exotic sight. Due to retire after years of living and working in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, they were looking for a simple life with the chance to ‘reconnect with nature and work with our hands’. Living briefly in Shetland had taught them to love island living and, attracted by the affordability of property on the island, they rented a house on Bute for a year.
Grade-B-listed Ascog Hall, with its ‘huge, beautiful plot of land’, came on the market and they took a year to consider the purchase as the house, garden and fernery were all by this time in need of restoration.
Commissioned by Alexander Stewart, a Glaswegian merchant, art collector and orchid grower, the Fernery was designed and built in 1873 by the garden designer Edward La Trobe Bateman, who also worked on the interiors of nearby Mount Stuart. The structure fell into decay after World War Two and was submerged in vegetation before being discovered and restored by Katherine and Wallace Fyfe. Experts from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh drew on information in an article on Ascog from a copy of the Gardeners’ Chronicle from 1879, which revealed that many of the original varieties remain in situ.
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Gravel paths wind between a miniature forest
Happily admitting to ‘knowing nothing’, Michael and Karin ‘enthusiastically, if not somewhat blueeyed’, pulled up their sleeves and began the restoration. Admitting that all the ferns looked alike at the start they soon learned to appreciate the ‘rich, varied collection and their provenance’.
Learning that the King Fern had survived for decades following the collapse of the fernery roof, they came to realise that ‘ferns are a hardy lot and not that fussy about who looks after them’.
Ongoing improvements are limited by budget with the couple doing all the maintenance and improvements themselves. Michael’s scientific background was useful in restoring and now maintaining the complex irrigation system and the roof.
‘The main thing was to reinstate the Fernery’s natural water cascade system and renew all the wood on the roof,’ he says, but they also repaired broken fern pockets and restocked where they were able to find and afford replacements. Electrical power and WiFi were introduced to allow monitoring of the interior and outside temperature and humidity via the Internet.
Most of the changes have been to the three-acre garden rather than just the Fernery. ‘In 2016 we became an RHS partner garden and this has been a source of motivation for us,’ says Michael.
Ferns are increasingly part of the scheme. ‘The climate conditions on the east coast of Bute is pretty much perfect for them,’ he says. ‘They need no care whatsoever, summer or winter, and are so well established that we have colonies of baby tree ferns throughout the garden.’
But Ascog is not just about the ferns, especially for Karin. ‘A good knowledge of the average garden perennial and
shrub did not prepare me for the variety of plants in the garden,’ she says. ‘After seven years we still discover new plants. It’s learning by discovering and doing – six days a week.’
The improvements continue apace, with Michael channelling excess water into a new rectangular pool, which in spring is surrounded by Meconopsis, drifts of Candelabra primula and Rhododendrons. A collection of sculptures designed by Karin were commissioned from her native Germany.
Recently they noticed the Fernery’s glass roof limited the growth of some varieties and took the risk of replanting them outside in the garden, where
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After seven years we are still discovering new plants
their progress is being monitored. ‘One is an offspring of the King Fern, which normally grows in a sub-tropical climate, so perhaps it will also be a test for global warming,’ she laughs. After seven years of maintenance and opening the garden to the public, Michael notes the need to be ruthlessly realistic about the amount of energy they can devote to Ascog. But there is one exciting project waiting in the wings.
‘We believe that illegal felling has left relatively few, if any, ancient King Ferns in the South African Kynsna rainforest; so perhaps a future plan might be to return our ancient specimen to the land where it spent its first thousand years.’