The Scottish Gardnener

About this book

Gardens can have many different functions: some exist to provide food or medicines, some for pleasure and recreation, while others serve to proclaim their owners' status, wealth and taste. People garden for a variety of reasons, and The Scottish Gardener looks at herbalists, plant collectors, nurserymen, botanists, artists and gardener's gardens. It explores monastic gardens, royal gardens, walled gardens and town and village gardens historically up to the present day. By focusing on sixty out of the thousands of Scottish gardens, this book asks if there is a distinctive tradition of Scottish gardening, how this has developed over time, and how it has been shaped by the climate, conflicts and changing fashions. The emphasis is very much on how gardeners stamp their own character on their gardens, so it is private not public gardens which are featured here. Information is given on visiting the gardens.

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Biography

Suki Urquhart first started gardening in the Far East, where she was working as a designer in the rag trade. In the mid 1970s she moved back to her native Scotland where she restored a garden around a sixteenth-century tower house. Since then she has lived and created gardens for herself in the North-east, the Hebrides, the central belt, Edinburgh and the highlands. She became a full time garden designer, specialising in walled gardens, in the1980s. Since 1996 she has worked as a freelance garden and features writer for numerous Scottish magazines and newspapers as well as having her own gardening column for four years in The Sunday Times Ecosse supplement.