ROMANTIC REVERIE
This gorgeous North Fife garden could have come straight out of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juilet
In 2010 garden designer Michael Innes was asked to help with the layout of a garden in north Fife and accepted immediately. The garden in question, perched on the side of a south-facing hill with views of rolling fields, was just a few miles away from his own home, St Mary’s Farm. In his ‘semi-retired’ stage he relished the chance to become immersed in a local project.
The initial brief was quite simple. The owners wished to create a vegetable garden on the slope behind the house. Yet, despite years of experience designing a wide range of gardens including Dumfries House for the Duke of Rothesay, Michael admits to having taken a sharp intake of breath when he saw for himself how steep the slope was. In the hope of finding a more suitable site on which to grow vegetables he suggested a walk around the garden.
In front of the house a generously proportioned gravel paved terrace overlooked the remains of a walled garden. ‘The outline was vaguely there on different levels,’ Michael explains, adding that the house was previously let and the garden had become neglected.
To the east, a tall beech hedge enclosed an orchard he thought might once have been a vegetable plot. But his client still felt growing vegetables close to the house would work best.
Always up for a challenge Michael drew up plans for a series of terraces with vegetables on the top two levels with a glasshouse to grow seeds and cuttings and pot plants. What sets these terraces apart is the drama of the planting on the lower levels. Here a succession of delphiniums, pink dahlias, creamy hydrangea, sweet-peas, roses and pink bell-shaped Diascia personata tumble down the retaining stone walls creating the impression that the glasshouse is floating on a rich sea of plants.
A gravel path running east from the vegetable garden leads to the woodland area. Essentially a spring garden, with azaleas, meconopsis, hellebores, flowering cornus and magnolias, it is designed to shine ‘before the main garden takes over’ explains Michael. This space does, however, enjoy a second flush of late summer colour when a rich tapestry of red, yellow, deep pink and gold plants stand out against layers of foliage that ramble up the background walls. Punctuated by evergreen sentinels of Eucryphia Nymansay, Thuja Smaragd and Hoheria are orange
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What sets these terraces apart is the drama of the planting
Crocosmia, yellow heleniums, pink and white anemone, repeat plantings of hydrangea, and deep red persicaria which stand out against the euphorias and other foliage plants.
From here, a paved path overhung with pink and creamy Hydrangea Annabelle and, says Michael, ‘the horribly named Hydrangea Invincibelle Spirit’, runs around the north of the house. Turn the corner and your first sight of the terrace is breathtaking – the first thing you see is a round stone pond framed with Rosa Iceberg.
In contrast to the Woodland Garden, the theme here, as emphasised by the planting, is essentially romantic. Clouds of roses, mounds of lavender and classic stone containers overflow with white and purple Petunia surfinia. Michael planted yew hedge walls at either end of the space as a wind break, laid out beds divided by soft, beige gravel paths and added box balls and cones for structure and winter interest. Colour comes from pink roses including ‘The Fairy’ and ‘Bonica’. Clematis, lonicera and roses, meanwhile, frame the house door.
It was now time to do something with the walled garden. The walls were only partially complete and the steps down unattractive and inadequate. Now the area is accessed via a pair of classic, semi-circular stone steps enclosing a fountain. The walls repaired, the sloping space was laid out in a cruciform style
The theme here, as emphasised by the planting, is essentially romantic
with paved paths dividing grass rectangles with central topiary yews. The focal point is the west-facing, thatched summer house complete with a wood burning stove for chilly summer evenings. Flanked on both sides by a deep border where shrub roses are set against Cornus, Abutilon vitifolium and Hydrangea villosa the summer house looks west across the garden.
Here there is an arresting allee of pleached limes underplanted with tulips, Hydrangea Annabelle and Geranium Rozanne. A herbaceous border runs along the north wall, and a small enclosed garden with a Lutyens-style seat is in the south east corner. A colour-themed bed divided by yew buttresses runs along the south wall.
Aside from the formal garden the simple grass spaces with different themes present other contrasts. In the orchard flowering cherries and fruit trees are underplanted with crocus, daffodils,
Pheasant’s Eye Narcissus blue camassia and autumn flowering colchicums.
To the west, the main drive is lined with white flowering double cherries,
Prunus avium Plena. The paddocks are planted around with an extensive variety of trees – ornamental birches,
Amelanchier, various Sorbus, Crab apples along with some larger trees such as Sequoiadendron and Quercus frainetto.
Reflecting on the past ten years
Michael recalls one especially exciting moment during the extensive excavation work. ‘We unearthed a cache of phosphorous grenades left over from
WWII,’ he says. ‘Some went off and we had to get the bomb squad in.’ Certainly, it will be a project to remember.