Scotland’s Gardens Scheme is back for 2022. Gayle Ritchie looks at some of the most gorgeous gardens you can visit in Tayside in Fife.
Across the Tay from Dundee, heading into Fife, lies a dazzling garden whose owners are encouraging people to enjoy the changing seasons at their three-acre rural escape.
In a new initiative, the owners of Willowhill Garden are offering a 2022 season ticket so that people can visit with friends, have a family outing or find inspiration to improve their gardens at home.
Sally Lorimore and Professor Eric Wright have been opening Willowhill as part of Scotland’s Garden Scheme (SGS) since 2008, making thousands of pounds for charity and giving pleasure to many.
Sally has a knack for dramatic herbaceous borders in different combinations of vibrant colours.
“I love a garden with zingy colours that people would not normally put together,” she says.
The season ticket idea came to them during the Covid-19 pandemic. As well as spreading out visitors, the couple encourage people to bring tea, coffee, snacks and lunches so that they can picnic in beautiful outdoor surroundings, while a long polytunnel offers shelter from rain.
The £20 season ticket (willowhillgarden.weebly.com/) allows the holder to visit the garden with a guest on 18 open days in 2022, starting this spring. It comes with a booklet explaining how Sally and Eric created the garden to fit into the rural landscape.
Paths curve around flower borders and undulate through a grassland area where there is a large pond, with damsel and dragon flies, and specimen trees. The planting ensures flower borders sing with colour for six months from March to September.
The couple go out of their way to encourage wildlife. “Invertebrates are a big thing for us,” says Sally.
“If you have lots of invertebrates everything else follows, the amphibians, the birds and mammals. And some of our best colour combinations come about by chance — by birds throwing seeds around the garden.”
Half the proceeds from Willowhill go to Scotland’s Garden Scheme, which has been opening gardens to raise funds for charity since 1931. The rest goes to Sally and Eric’s chosen charity, the Rio Community Centre, based in Newport-on-Tay’s old cinema, which supports people in the local area and places emphasis on youth work.
Liz Stewart, national organiser of SGS, says: “This is a wonderful opportunity to experience a garden as it changes through the seasons. We are grateful to the owners of Willowhill, and all our participating gardens, for their generosity in sharing their love for gardening with the public, all to raise funds for charity.”
Meanwhile, other gardens taking part in this year’s SGS – and there are more than 500 – include those in scenic island locations, secret green spaces, and those boasting rare plants.
The spectacular views over Fife to Perthshire and Angus, and the large, flooded quarry full of fish and planted with impressive marginals, make South Flisk garden in Blebocraigs special. Next to the house is St Andrews Pottery where the owner will be demonstrating his skills.
Also in Fife is Boarhills Village Gardens – eight delightfully varied village gardens exhibiting a range of styles.
For rare plants and a national collection of nicotiana, head to Amulree in Drummore, Perthshire, owned by two head gardeners. The garden, started in 2017, now consists of a sunny terrace with displays of half-hardy and tender plants, exuberantly-planted borders separated by serpentine grass patches, a small vegetable patch, a glasshouse and a “wild” bit.
Helensbank in Kincardine is another example of a passionate plant growers’ garden. It houses more than a hundred roses, including the National Collection of Portland Roses.
Nineteen of the gardens are located on Scottish islands, including Armadale Castle, Gardens and Museum on Skye, and Leathad Ard on Lewis
Meanwhile the Secret Garden is at the centre of a biodynamic farm on the Isle of Lismore in the Inner Hebrides and is a haven for wildflowers, birds, bees and butterflies. It has a vegetable garden, tree nursery, physic garden, orchard and poly tunnel.
In the Pentland Hills, a marriage of nature, land art and poetry can be experienced at Little Sparta – Ian Hamilton Finlay’s greatest work of art. Opening for the first time with SGS, in addition to their regular summer openings, the garden was started by Ian in 1966 with his wife Sue Finlay and became an internationally acclaimed garden across seven acres of a wild and exposed moorland site.
These garden gems are all listed in the 2022 ‘yellow book’ of Scottish gardens open for charity which has just been published and is available at scotlandsgardens.org
Last year SGS welcomed around 55,000 visitors on specific dates or by arrangement. The average ticket price is £5, ranging to over £10 for groups of gardens.
Some of the gardens are open all year round. More significant openings are for snowdrops, from the end of January until March, and then there are a few openings for spring bulbs. The peak season runs from May to the end of July. There are also some late summer, and early autumn openings.
- The scheme helps people across Scotland open their gardens to the public to raise money for charity – from cottage gardens and castles to stately homes; allotments to therapeutic and physic gardens; formal gardens to wildlife sanctuaries.
Many are privately owned and therefore normally inaccessible to the public.
