National Trust unveils garden plans for Pitmedden's Great Walled Garden
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Working with the landscape architect, Chelsea Flower Show garden designer and Beechgrove Garden presenter Chris Beardshaw, the National Trust for Scotland has unveiled plans for reinterpreting the classic parterre garden at Pitmedden for the modern world.
In late 2018, and with thanks to a generous private supporter, a plan was made to explore an innovative ‘rethink’ of the formal parterre design in one of Aberdeenshire’s most well-known gardens. This was a chance to depart from formality and the ‘normal’, and to look at reinterpreting the style for new audiences.
A spokeswoman for the NTS explained: "We wanted to re-model the current design of the nationally important horticultural garden at Pitmedden to satisfy the demands of modern visitors, as well as reinterpret the narrative of the garden as a significant contributor to the gardens of Scotland.
"In doing so, the historical importance of the garden was carefully reviewed to ensure that any reworking justifiably enhanced the current garden, but we placed an increased emphasis on the narratives of future gardening style biodiversity and responsible resource management."
The review primarily focused on the upper terraces of the Great Walled Garden, which had an overlay of some early designs added in the 1990s.
These were deemed not to be working for the benefit of the garden, and so provided an opportunity to think differently about this area.
She continued: "We decided to create a de-constructed parterre of bulbs, herbaceous plants and grasses.
"We hope that this proposed parterre fully interacts with visitors, as they’re enveloped by a decorative plant tapestry.
"This parterre terrace will become the antithesis of the lower garden parterres, from which an elevated view provides visitors with a look back in time."
From a horticultural perspective, the proposed parterre will be an exemplar (the largest in the UK) of a stylistic approach to maximising floral reward, biodiversity and aesthetic delivery, while being mindful of the need to reduce the inputs – material, financial and human.
The need to be thoughtful of sustainability and a changing climate will be embedded in the design.
Also fundamental to the review was the requirement to respect the on-site and textual history of the garden, with minimal disturbance of the historical elements, minimal site imposition and minimal cultivation depths.
During the design process Chris undertook an analysis of the garden spaces to identify the relative confusion of spatial arrangement and under-exploited spaces within the existing garden structure. He identified areas close to the house that contribute little to the total visitor experience and found confused pedestrian circulation patterns.
The current visitor circulation map results in a lack of exploration to the full site.
Having identified these weaknesses, Chris started to explore how to maximise the opportunities of the adjacent garden spaces.
He wanted to offer visitors a clear narrative as they explore the garden, from the formality of the near-house-spaces to the much-valued visual reward of the balustrades into the Great Garden parterres. He focused on designed areas that would create distinctive character spaces.
Chris’s final design layout – a sequence of garden spaces encourages greater visitor exploration and connection.
Once settled on the general layout, Chris then turned his attention to the content of the areas to be designed.
The proposed Upper Terrace borders re-introduce the sigmoid pathways in mown grass, with a contemporary and exotic deconstructed parterre plantation of bulbs, herbaceous plants and grasses. This is a biodiverse and species-rich, modernistic response.
Swathes and drifts of species subtly weave a seasonal pattern through a specifically choreographed plantation to provide a longer season of interest.
A close-up of a meadow area. Tall, slender stalks grow in the foreground, with purple flowers just emerging from the buds at the top.
Between them grow feathery clumps of a fine grass.
Finally, Chris used historical influences to underpin the whole design.
He explored colour schemes, fabric design and furniture contemporary to the period in which the garden was founded, to influence his selection of materials as well as shapes and textures.
After finding an original colour palette from the period, as well as researching fashions in fabric and objects of the time, he selected plants that fit with this scheme
And then 2020 happened.
Despite all the trials and tribulations of last year, the garden staff have progressed well with ground preparations and laying out the design in readiness for planting in early 2021.
Surveyors have assisted in the laying out of the plan. Archaeologists and geophysicists were consulted to ensure that no hidden historical structures will be affected.
Thousands of bulbs are now ready to be planted.
The plants have been ordered from Scottish nurseries and are in quarantine to ensure they are disease-free.
They’ll be delivered in early spring 2021 and many regional garden staff members, volunteers and horticultural students will be called upon to help plant the thousands of plants that will make up the design.
