Twenty-four years ago, when Rose and Stephen Rickman first moved to Newtonmill House in Angus, Rose felt utterly overwhelmed by the garden in front of the elegant Georgian house. ‘Our previous garden was a small one behind our terraced house in Edinburgh,’ she says. ‘I lacked experience and it needed so much work and a fresh eye. As I had young children there was just never enough time to get outside.’ Worse, the couple soon discovered that the house was full of dry rot.

Setting the scene

Nonetheless Rose soon realized that this garden, in rolling countryside to the east of Edzell and surrounded by tall trees, had excellent bones. Unusually for Scotland, where walled gardens tend to be tucked away at a distance from the main house, the one acre walled garden at Newtonmill sits in front of the house. It is sited on a central axis that runs from the front door across a lawn, through a metal gate and down a central grass path that leads through a generous, show-stopping border. The metal gate is set with a three dimensional mill wheel: a reminder that until recently energy needs on this former dairy farm were met by a fully functional mill.

Royal connections

Research suggests that Elizabeth Elphinstone, a cousin of the Queen Mother, who lived at Newtonmill until the mid-50s, was responsible for creating the traditional layout of the walled garden. It was reputedly her idea to back the herbaceous border with a row of deep purple Prunus cerasifera ‘Pissardii’. Now clipped into a 5ft hedge it brings a striking combination of height and colour to the herbaceous scheme while protecting the plants from the wind. Rose, who added the central arch, now covered with trusses of fragrant ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’ roses, Clematis alpina and Lonicera periclymenum explains: ‘The Queen Mother is known to have been a regular visitor, bringing plants from the Castle of Mey to Newtonmill House.’ Rose, who was bought up in Yorkshire, comes from a keen gardening family.

Her mother, she says, had a good eye for colour and understood about combining plants to their best advantage. At Newtonmill the garden was so overgrown that every border has had to be lifted, made weed free, fed and replanted: a task that took several years. Although the water table is high, and she found the clay soil could be difficult to deal with, some tuber plants like peonies have thrived. ‘I try to fill the garden with plants that are happy here. It can be very cold in the winter, when the frost sinks into the ground as there is nowhere for it to roll out. The yew hedge at the south end acts as a fourth wall.’ The colour scheme in the central border was laid out ‘by eye’ with pairs of plants placed on either side of the border wherever possible to lead the visitor onwards.

Variety in the borders

Designed to peak in June and July, key plants include delphiniums, rudbeckia, thalictrum, echinops, tradescantia, Phlomis russeliana, centaurea and lychnis. White phlox stands out clear against the background of purple prunus, while a wide variety of hardy geraniums like ‘Johnson’s Blue’ and G. endressii ‘Wargrave’s Pink’ light the front of the border. A range of asters and crocosmia extend the season. The rectangular spaces at the back of the border were further sub-divided into rooms or compartments for growing vegetables. ‘Vegetables are very important to us. I feel they are part of a family garden, and add colour and form,’ Rose says. ‘We like to have a plentiful supply of our own to share with our guests.’

She grows 27 different varieties, which means a continual supply for 48 weeks of the year. ‘We recently tried ‘Swift’ as demonstrated on Gardeners’ World, grown in a bag in a cold greenhouse, and had home grown new potatoes on the 30th May.’ She likes waxy potatoes for cooking and favours locally bred ‘Edzell Blue’ for flavour, although it tends to be prone to blight. The season starts with ‘Red Duke of York’, which is followed by ‘Foremost’ and ‘Premiere’. She is also fond of ‘Shetland Black’, ‘Kestrel’, ‘Epicure’, ‘Salad Blue’ and ‘Cara’, which makes up the main crop, and ‘Kerr’s Pink’, Rose’s personal favourite. Soft fruit includes black, red and white currants, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries and tayberries.

Apples, plums and pears are espaliered against the west-facing wall. A selection of red and purple dahlias add colour at the end of the summer and are useful as cut flowers in the house, where Rose runs a Dinner, Bed and Breakfast scheme. None of the work in the garden, she stresses, could be accomplished without the skilled help of former army chef Mark Hutson, who took on a second career in horticulture, gaining an HNC in horticulture at Arbroath College

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Newtonmill House, By Brechin, Angus DD9 7PZ. Details of accommodation at Newtonmill House, see Bed and Breakfast for Garden Lovers by Alistair Sawday or contact Rose and Stephen Rickman. Tel: 01356 622533 or email rrickman@srickman.co.uk or view on line at www.newtonmillhouse.co.uk