Garden of the Season – Abbotsford
September 13th 2021The Regency Walled Gardens at Abbotsford are laid out as a series of three ‘outdoor rooms’. Designed by Sir Walter Scott with advice from artists, architects and friends, they are a rare surviving example of a Regency garden layout.
The first of the three ‘rooms’ is the South Court, which creates an impressive formal entrance to Abbotsford. Including an imposing portcullis entrance gate, high surrounding walls and a gothic arcade based on the cloister at Melrose Abbey. This is followed by the sunken Morris Garden and Sir Walter Scott’s Kitchen Garden which offer wonderful views of the historic house’s castle-like East façade. The Kitchen Garden is where Scott grew the vegetables and fruit he needed to feed his household and we still grow them there today.
As we come into Autumn, Abbotsford’s Garden team are busy beginning to harvest this produce. A changing variety of fruits and vegetables are for sale in the gift shop, some are given to Ochiltree’s café on site to be used in lunches and the gardens even supply Selkirk Distillers with the botanicals to make our Abbotsford gin (also on sale in the gift shop).
We’re grateful to have a wonderful team of garden volunteers who have recently been busy helping with routine dead heading and pruning to extend the flowering season into the autumn, ensuring the gardens look colourful for our visitors for as long as possible. At present, the borders are still full of colour and fragrance with the Dahlia’s in particular providing beautiful vibrant flowers.
We’ve also been working on our new Mindfulness Garden, which we’re opening as part of Sir Walter Scott’s 250thanniversary celebrations. This will sit in a sunny corner of the Morris Garden and include a water feature which we’re currently installing.
