Sculpting with plants

The walled garden at Whitburgh House, Midlothian The home of Mr and Mrs Alastair Salvesen

- Caroline Donald

Inspired by the Dutch plantings of Piet Oudolf, Elizabeth Salvesen has replanted the walled garden with perennials and grasses to create a fine backdrop to her sculpture collection

WHEN Elizabeth Salvesen and her husband, Alastair, moved to Whitburgh House, Midlothian, in 1992, the one-acre walled garden contained little save a few shrubs, grass and a network of paths inherited from the days when fruit and vegetables were grown for the house. It was the perfect site in which to create a new garden.

It might seem counterintuitive, but there can be disadvantages to an open aspect and rich soil. In a normal year—if there is still such a thing—the rainfall at Whitburgh is only about 26in per annum. Likewise, being on a hill 750ft above sea level may allow for huge skies and wonderful long views of rolling farmland from the 19th-century house, but, when it came to the herbaceous borders in the walled garden that Mrs Salvesen and her gardener Vincent Dudley planted with tra- ditional country-garden favourites, even the shelterbelt of mature trees that form a frame around the sandstone walls offered little protection. ‘It is very exposed,’ says Mrs Salvesen. ‘Everything grew so well that, come the July winds, they blew over and we got rather bored with that.’ It was time for a rethink.