The enchanted garden
After three decades of hard graft, Rosie Thorburn has created a spell-binding garden with carpets of snowdrops around her charming 18th-century manse, finds Antoinette Galbraith
Winter is an exciting time at Kirkton Manor House, Rosie Thorburn’s 18th-century manse that overlooks Cademuir Hill in the Manor Valley, a little-known paradise west of Peebles. Sitting on the side of a slope at a height of 645ft, this sunny, terraced garden is a striking, colour-filled foreground for the vast amphitheatre of steep, green hills rising up beyond the Manor Water.
Winter flowers and the ‘great excitement they bring’ are a highlight of the year in the garden that Rosie has spent the last thirty years creating. It’s not only the sheets of snowdrops that carpet the woodlands on both side of the pale yellow, harled, 18th-century manse that enchant but also the jewel-like surprises scattered in the borders and woodlands.
The drive opens up onto a large grassy area,
bound to the south by a row of yew pyramids. Known as the Five Sisters the pyramids screen a bed packed with winter treasures: Leucojum vernum (or ‘snowflakes’), hellebores nestled among fragrant pale pink Viburnum x bodnantense and yellow Mahonia ‘Charity’. The short winter days are brightened with the star of the show, Rosie’s special favourite, fragrant, pale yellow Hamamelis mollis.
‘Blue at this time of the year is a treat,’ she continues, alluding to blue Chionodoxa, Grape hyacinth and Pulmonaria with its spotted foliage that looks attractive all year. ‘The final big hurrah comes in April with brightly coloured tulips,’ says Rosie. In a range of hot scarlets, oranges and blacks, these compliment the ‘brightest, strongest pink’ of Prunus ‘Okame’.
The Five Sisters, she explains, are the result of inspiration gained on a garden design course she took at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) shortly after arriving at Kirkton when help was needed. ‘There was nothing. No garden, just a slope below the house and a pony paddock to the east,’ she explains. Used at intervals throughout the garden as a subtle attempt to impose
‘order on chaos’, the yew pyramids and complementary box balls add valuable winter and summer structure.
The overall aim was to create a naturalistic garden that would merge seamlessly into the landscape. It is managed with minimal but skilled help.
Beloved plants are increasingly left to do their own thing, spilling over paths and out of beds or scrambling up walls. ‘I am very relaxed as I rely on what nature gives me. Everything in this garden is unforeseen. I have different beds doing different things at different times of the year,’ says Rosie, adding that foliage has become increasingly important.
The pair of yew pyramids at the foot of the stone steps link the two
“The yew pyramids add valuable winter and summer structure
main levels. To your left the terrace beds are mainly reserved for the vibrant, clashing reds, oranges, blues and purples that define summer and autumn for Rosie. Here, in winter, the rustic skeleton mature apple trees strike a quirky note while in spring the cascading blossom of three exuberant Exochorda x macrantha ‘The Bride’ tumble over the raised bed to the rear.
Rosie’s passion for plants, born and nurtured in her mother’s home garden, Attadale in Wester Ross, is evident in the beds that line and spill over the narrow path leading to the Church Wood. This small area takes its name from the ancient Manor Parish Kirk, the eventual destination for many of the flowers grown here. Besides the drifts of snowdrops she enjoys ‘the sun, rain and ice on the arched branches of her favourite Rosa Rubrifolia. It’s the same down Rugosa alley, where in summer, ‘you have to push your way’ between the exuberant white roses.
Snowdrop ribbons line the grass paths winding beside the mill lade at the foot of the garden before giving way to a seemingly endless supply of Leucojum vernum, daffodils and bluebells and later white and blue camassia, yellow Primula florindae, purple iris and pale yellow Sisyrinchium. Snowdrops
“Rosie’s passion for plants was born and nurtured in her mother’s garden