WITHIN THESE WALLS

Designer Arne Maynard has brought dynamic, contemporary design to a vast and historic walled garden in Scotland’s Spey Valley

- CAROLE DRAKE

At over seven acres and bounded by 680 metres of wall, Gordon Castle’s walled garden is one of the largest in the UK. Located near Fochabers in the Spey Valley, a surprisingly mild corner of eastern Scotland, it was built in 1803 as a powerhouse of food and flower production stoked by 40 gardeners. Used for commercial raspberry growing after the Second World War, it had lain dormant for some years by the time Angus and Zara Gordon Lennox took over the Gordon Castle estate in 2008.

Determined to bring the walled garden back to life, they enlisted the help of designer Arne Maynard. ‘We chose Arne because he’s a passionate kitchen gardener himself and understood that we didn’t want a “pretty, ornamental” garden but one that was in keeping with the ethos of a working, productive garden where everything has a use,’ says Zara. Apart from a couple of glasshouses and the 249 espaliered fruit trees lining the walls, well-tended throughout the garden’s history, the site was a blank canvas.

Rather than recreate what the garden would have looked like in its heyday, Angus, Zara and Arne have created an adaptable, contemporary garden, where plants form the structure. ‘Apart from the paths and the plant and tree supports there’s very little hard landscaping. Instead we have used fun, planted structures including a mown maze and raised banks, to draw people around the garden,’ says Arne.