Postcards from the hedge

Sunday Herald, The, Aug 15, 1999 by Sean Hignett

Moving in on the movie is, I'm told, the hot ticket in tourism. The Isle of Man is currently getting an unexpected kiss of life for its tourist industry from the fact that the producers of Waking Ned mistook it for Ireland and shot the movie there. Living the literature is another crowd-puller, best exemplified in Dublin where thousands of gorgonzola sarnies are scoffed in Davy Byrne's pub in a tribute to Joyce's Ulysses. Today in Edinburgh and for the next two weekends, however, there's a gentler attraction, a means to escape Festival frenzy: you can pop into the postcard.

Raeburn's portrait of the Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch, better known as the Skating Minister is the best- selling picture postcard of the National Gallery of Scotland. On the edge of that loch, on the south-side of Arthur's Seat in Duddingston Village, just a few minutes from the rumble of the Royal Mile, doctors Andrew and Nancy Neil have created one of the finest gardens in the country. The garden, like the postcard, is also a bestseller. Each year it raises more from its openings for the charities supported by Scotland's Gardens Scheme than any other garden.

Retired GPs, the Neils began creating the garden more than 30 years ago on what for centuries had been the kirk's rubbish tip. When they first entered the piece of rough land running down to the loch, the wall between it and the churchyard appeared to be two feet high. By the time they had removed the rubbish, the wall was 10 feet tall. They then discovered that, where there was soil at all, the rocky outcrops of Arthur's Seat were just beneath the surface. Undaunted they utilised nature, planting cracks with rare alpines and crevices with shrubs. Baby trees, starved and confined by nature, turned themselves into bonsai without the slightest assistance.

At the loch side a small octagonal pavilion known as Thomson's Tower is where the rules of curling were first formulated and where Scott wrote Heart of Midlothian. Johnson and Boswell also walked here and, according to local legend, the latter remarked "There's nothing to beat the rhubarb of Duddingston". To commemorate that, Andrew has planted a clump of rhubarb under one of the Scots' pines.

Sadly, this year Andrew and Nancy have not felt up to the preparation and organisation they feel is necessary before opening for the Gardens Scheme. Not only are both in their late seventies and becoming increasingly frail, Andrew has recently been weakened by a series of heart operations. However on Saturday and Sunday afternoons during the Festival they have decided to open. The proceeds, from voluntary donations, will go to a trust that has been formed with the aim of keeping the garden going when the Neils finally have hung up their hoes. Go along and dig deep.

Further afield from Festival frenzy, Scotland's Garden Scheme has a good collection of openingstoday. These include two gardens being specially opened by the National Trust on behalf of the scheme - Pittmedden in Aberdeenshire, where the Trust has re-created the elaborate parterres originally laid out in 1675; and Hill of Tarvit, the house and garden re-modelled by Sir Robert Lorimer in 1906. At Straiton in Ayrshire, the Regency glasshouses, arboretum and extensive herbaceous borders of Blairquhan, a Tudor-style castle built at the beginning of the 19th century, are open. In Caithness, Langwell, the home of Lady Anne Bentinck a couple of miles from Berriedale has a beautiful old walled garden.

You can also catch two extremes of fruit and vegetable cultivation this afternoon. Just south of Biggar, Culter Allers has a splendid one-acre traditional kitchen garden while, overlooking the Summer Isles at Achiltibuie, "further north than Moscow", the Hydroponicum has an indoor Garden of the Future with three different climatic zones where tropical trees and exotic fruit, flowers and vegetables grow without soil All gardens are open this afternoon, entrance fees (all for charity) and closing times vary. Dr Neil's Garden, Duddingston Village (on the south side of Arthur's Seat) is open this afternoon and each Saturday and Sunday during the Festival from 2pm- 5pm. Wide range of alpine, herbaceous plants, conifers and shrubs including many unusual specimens on sale. Voluntary donation, proceeds to the charitable trust established to provide for the continued care of the garden.