Spring has arrived and we have a wonderful array of flowers looking their best. Stroll around the garden with colourful displays of flowers, admire the castle’s reflection in the still moat, or venture further afield to the wider estate to see spring unfurling.
A landscape with drama and romance
From the early 18th century, British landscape gardeners had been creating gardens inspired by pictures, but by 1800 a backlash had set in. Critics considered the grassy vistas designed by Capability Brown too smooth and tidy. Scotney's picturesque garden is a last fling in this backlash style of gardening.
A fairy-tale feel
The garden has naturalistic planting which is seemingly untouched by human hand and its cloud-like planting of rhododendrons and azaleas creates a fairy-tale feel, with the ruins of the Old Castle at its centre. Wisteria and old English roses adorn its sandstone walls, whilst the surrounding herbaceous beds are always throwing out new colours throughout the seasons.
Seasonal highlights around the garden
This spring, you may notice the view from the house down towards the old castle looks different due to work the garden team have been doing over the past few years.
As you head down towards the Old Castle you will notice that the large rhododendron and kalmia beds have been cut back hard. This level of pruning may seem like quite a drastic step to take but unfortunately the rhododendrons had grown to a height that the picturesque view was slowly disappearing, and the shrubs were also merging into one and slowly smothering each other. We are undertaking the pruning work in stages and having started last year with two more years to go, the majority of the plants in the beds will be pruned back so that in future we can keep the height of them at a level that is easier to maintain. By doing this work in stages we can ensure that there will always be flowering shrubs in these beds to continue to add interest to the garden throughout spring.