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By Antoinette Galbraith, photographs Roy Summers |
When Janey and Hew Dalrymple moved to the East Lothian farmhouse that previously belonged to Hew’s grandmother they found an exposed two-storey property surrounded by wheat fields. There were no trees, and the hedges between the fields had been torn out, leaving the house open to the wind that blew in from the Firth of Forth. But the views to the south towards the Lammermuir Hills and to the west over Berwick Law were magnificent.
Janey, whose previous experience of gardening was limited to designing a small London garden, was ecstatic. While living in the south she had visited some of the great English gardens such as Hidcote Manor and Barnsley House and she was keen to put into practice some of her new ideas. In addition, as co-owner with Lulu Benson of Arkangel, Edinburgh’s prettiest boutique in William Street, which sells smart French clothes, she was able to transfer her eye for design and colour to the garden. Her organisational skills came in useful when she began planning the garden. ‘We did it step by step in a logical way, starting with the formal garden, directly in front of the house,’ she says. ‘Not being an experienced gardener, I looked at the axes. The first thing I did was to put down a path from the front door. Then walls were built from both sides of the house, to create some shelter for the slightly sloping upper formal garden. The herbaceous borders planted with roses followed.’ She then laid a gravel path across the front of the house leading towards a sunny, west-facing patio where the family eats and entertains. A geometric box parterre in a diamond shape was planted along the front of the house where herb-filled shapes add a classical dimension.
A further gravel path punctuated with columns of fastigate yew and underplanted with froths of yellow Alchemilla mollis then defined the central axis. Once this was done herbaceous borders were laid out along the length of the garden walls and filled with different types of scented French roses including ‘Fantin Latour’ and ‘Gloire des Mousseux’. In the early summer the west facing border is planted with perennials in a vibrant palette of red, pink and blue. The east border is filled with cooler yellows, purples and blues.
To cope with the change of level in the sloping garden, a terrace set with a wide flight of steps was laid separating the Upper Garden from the Rose Garden. It was then planted with a yew hedge, now clipped in waves, which took five years to get established. Now, fully matured, it hides the Rose Garden from the upper garden, although the undulations in the hedges allow glimpses of the view. The lawn at the foot of the steps is laid out with a double row of semi-evergreen Crataegus x lavallei ‘Carrierei’, with each tree set in a round bed planted with scented Geranium macrorrhizum ‘Ingwersons Variety’. ‘I saw this done in a French garden,’ Janey says. Beyond the trees, a rustic wooden pergola is covered with rambling roses, including pink Rosa ‘New Dawn’, ‘Little White Pet’ and the fragrant ‘Felicité et Perpétue’ under planted with a row of Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ and a double row of purple allium. Height comes from an eye-catching pair of stone urns found by Hew. ‘He said we needed scale in the garden. He chose the urns and had them set on plinths on the herringbone brick paths.’
The Rose Garden is bisected with a path running from east to west towards a pair of symmetrical arches. On the west, the arch leads to a lawn flanked by a herbaceous border that runs on the outside of the garden wall towards the kitchen and past the grassy paddock, home to the hens and ducks. Here too is the mosaic garden, edged in box, in which a pebble mosaic of the Bass Rock has been given a formal note by the addition of four topiary laurels, Prunus lusitanica.
To the east of the Rose Garden a path leads through plantings of shrubs and old Scots roses to a grassy mound made from leftover topsoil excavated from the kitchen garden. A spiral path winds its way to the top of the mound, from where you can see both the Lammermuir Hills and Berwick Law. The path then leads back towards the house through a potager laid out with box-edged beds and planted with soft fruit, several varieties of lettuce, potatoes and vegetables.
While the garden was being laid out, Hew was busy planting a shelterbelt of trees outwith the garden walls. A mixture of native species, including sorbus, birch and cornus, combined with evergreens such as Scots pines, were planted in blocks leaving long wide-open vistas with views of the countryside beyond. Remarkably the couple, who have four children – Hero 19, Hewie 17, Phania 15 and 12-year-old Lydia – tend this garden with help two days a week from their dedicated gardener Stuart Armstrong, a former stonemason. As a result the garden developed slowly. ‘Everything is inspired by something I’ve seen. The ideas don’t all come in one big rush, they come over time.’
Janey struggles to find time to garden when the children are on holiday. ‘The garden is designed to peak at the end of June or the beginning of July. I garden like mad until the summer holidays and then I forget about my plants to concentrate on the family and Arkangel.’
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