A HOME FOR ALL SEASONS

This nature-centred home in Stirlingshire gives its owners everything they want, for body and soul, now and forever

- Caroline Ednie

Meaning ‘a sunny place’ in Gaelic, Grianan is a bespoke new-build home in rural Stirlingshire that its delighted owners describe as “a simple and modest house that feels simultaneously modern, warm and inviting, celebrating the views without distraction”. That, say Neil Smith and Wesley Zwiep, makes it “our perfect home”.

It was a trip to Skye in 2012, and the idea of living surrounded by nature, that first sparked the idea of building their own home. At the time the couple were living in a flat in Glasgow's west end, and it would take a decade before Grianan finally emerged. The search for a suitable plot alone took the best part of three years. But the pair kept the faith, using the time to develop their ideas.

“We decided that rather than having a weekend or holiday home, we'd prefer to sell the flat and find somewhere close enough to commute to our work,” recalls Neil, who, with Wes, owns Orro, a contemporary jewellery-maker in the city’s west end. A plot search website eventually led them to a 1.5-acre site with outline planning permission in rural Stirlingshire. They finally took ownership of the plot in 2017 and immediately embarked on creating a garden there, applying the same attention to detail as they do when designing jewellery, albeit with a lot more manual labour. “We got stuck in right away,” says Neil, adding that gardening has been a passion since his teens, and that he and Wes had transformed the shared back garden of their Glasgow flat.

“The plot was essentially an overgrown field,” he says. “It was all a bit wild, and we had to clear a lot of scrub, but it was a blank canvas. While we were cutting paths, creating screening hedges and planting shrubs, we were also thinking about the house we’d like to build.”