Hilltop Garden, Stirlingshire

Formal Garden

We were asked to design this walled garden in 2000. Rectilinear and diagonal paths radiate out from a circular garden pond. Although we built it, the clients wanted to carry out their own planting. The property changed hands, and nearly 20 years later we were called in by the new owners to replant it.

Heavy clay soils and an exposed hilltop location made planting more difficult than most sites, but the hornbeam hedges and Elaeagnus ebbingeii standards seem to thrive here.

The central rose garden is planted with Silver Pear Trees (Pyrus salicifolia Pendula) which are under-planted with the wonderfully fragrant white Rosa ‘Desdemona’.

In summer Geranium ‘Rozanne’ clambers beneath the trees, its deep purple flowers giving an almost ultraviolet glow and in late summer and autumn the tall elegant white flowers of the Japanese anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’ sway gently in the breeze.