Scotland for Gardeners

This is the most important new addition to Scotland's Garden scene.  From the Garden's website:

'At the turn of the 20th Century, the Scottish adventurer Ella Christie returned home from a trip to the Orient inspired to build a Japanese Garden. 

As might be expected from the first woman to meet the Dalai Lama, Christie’s approach to developing the garden was trailblazing.  She chose a female designer – the gifted Taki Handa – to create the seven acre site in the grounds of Cowden Castle.  In doing so, The Japanese Garden at Cowden became the first and only garden of its size and scale to be designed by a woman.  It remains a unique and utterly authentic bridge between Scottish and Japanese culture.

Sadly vandalised in the 1960’s, the garden is being brought back to life by a team of experts including the renowned Japanese architect and garden designer Professor Masao Fukuhara.  The Professor is best known for winning the Gold Medal at Chelsea Flower Show as well as the restoration of The Japanese Gardens at Kew, London and Tatton Park, Cheshire.

Michael Innes, admired for his landscape designs at Attadale Gardens and Dumfriess House, has recently designed several new borders for the eastern end of the garden. 

Kate White, our head gardener, since October 2016 continues to battle the elements to maintain the seven acre site prophetically named: The Place of Pleasure and Delight’ by Ella Christie.

Cowden was inherited by my father, Bobby Stewart and is now managed by a charitable trust. As chairwoman of the trust I am delighted to announce that we have passed the half way mark of the restoration programme.  The decision to open the garden before completion was taken due to the overwhelming support and interest in the project. '

"The most important Japanese Garden in the Western World"

PROFESSOR JIJI SUZUKI

18th Hereditary Head of the Soami School of Imperial Design, Japan, 1925

This Charles Jencks land art project, financed in a a partnership with the Duke of Buccleuch, not far from Jencks home base at Portrack, covers 55 acres on the site of a former open cast coalmine near Sanquhar. 160,000 tonnes of earth have been shaped into new landforms and a series of paths link to the southern Upland Way and to the villages of Kelloholm and Kirkconnel. Features include two characteristic breast-like Jencks mounds with standing stones on them and perhaps best of all, a high up main viewpoint from which the central axis of standing stones and small lakes can be appreciated. There are plans for other artists to create work for the project.

The interpretation boards stress the features connections to Jenck's perennial themes of the cosmos and astro-phyics. But I cant help feeling that this stuff misses the point or at least the effect of what has been created here. The connection between 'the heavens' and this site is much more human, resembling a newly minted set for a Hollywood druid film with a combination of influences from the Nasca lines of Peru,  to the ruins of Stonehenge and Scotland's top ancient sites Callanish, neolithic Orkney, Kilmartin Glen and the ruins of Jarlshof on Shetland. Many of these ancient sites were laid out to line up with the astronmical timetable: solstice for example. The axis at Crawick lies is due south, a man-made rather than celestial choice. The site is as yet rather bare, barren and the of the stones seem too close together and unreal: one set look like badly alighted teeth. The designers of the ancient sites listed above were evidently architects with more finesse.

On a mild October day in hazy sunlight this was a great way to spend an afternoon in a landscape with interesing topography and vistas opening up from every vantage point. It will be interesting to compare this project with the even larger one at Kelty in Fife, another open cast mine reclamation project which Jencks is working on. At the carpark take the right hand path which takes you up the high vantage point at the far end, so that you cover the whole site anticlockwise. Be aware that if you take the main stone-lined avenue back, you'll end up at a dead end and have to backtrack. Well worth a visit, there is clearly plenty more work to do at the site and in time and as it matures it will improve. Future archeologists will be confused though…!

Tickets are available to purchase on site at Crawick, in addition tickets are also available from A’ The Airts in Sanquhar and the Kirkconnel Heritage Society