Crathes Castle Gardens

This garden is one of the best for its clever use of colour. In front of a typically Scottish turreted and rough-hewn pink-granite castle of the Burnett family, dating from 1596, lies a wonderful garden whose monstrous yew hedges were planted in 1702. In the 1920s, inside the tall stone walled garden, Sir James and Lady Sybil Burnett laid out eight distinct areas of great beauty. They offer different moods. Their inspiration was Gertrude Jekyll. Back in 1895, she had visited the garden and was impressed by the brilliance of the colour masses and the size of the gooseberries. The different areas are divided from each other by yew hedges and borders. The White Borders are a treat in early summer. An old Portuguese laurel acts as a central pivot where crossed by another path flanked by shrub and herbaceous borders looking good from June until October. The June Borders, full of hot colours of lupins, irises and pyrethrums, provide frames for the outline of the castle in one direction and a large granite dovecote in the other. The Gold Garden dazzles the senses. Old greenhouses act as a dividing line between the upper and lower gardens. Facing south, they contain pelargoniums, fuchsias, a 'National Collection' of Malmaison carnations and other flowering pot plants. To the side of the greenhouses is the entrance to the upper level of the garden with croquet lawn, bordered with great bolsters and finials of yew, and the Upper Pool Garden.