THE WALLED GARDEN
Our 20,000 crocuses flowered with hardly anyone to see them
When Angus and Zara Gordon Lennox took over the running of Gordon Castle in Fochabers in 2008, they inherited one of Scotland’s largest walled gardens. Since then they have overseen its transformation from a wreck to a thriving tourist attraction, where visitors come to walk among fruit and flowers and eat cake in the popular cafe that uses produce picked fresh from the garden.
While the gates have been open for most of the past year, the cafe has remained closed, resulting in far fewer visitors. Zara and head gardener Ed
Bollom have been working with a much smaller team than usual in order to care for eight intensively planted acres. “Throughout the winter Ed and I replanted the entire central borders with roses and perennials and this spring we saw our 20,000 crocus bulbs flower while there was hardly anyone to appreciate them.” With a coffee bar now in place and a date of April 28 earmarked for the reopening of the cafe, Zara hopes that increasing numbers of visitors will come to enjoy the garden’s ongoing transformation. “We do this so that people can come and smell the flowers and enjoy their beauty and scent, as well as giving them inspiration to grow vegetables, so it will be so exciting to welcome our visitors back again and allow them to enjoy the beauty of the garden.”