Walled Garden Inspiration: Boath House

We’ve been on holiday to Scotland, visiting Nairn for my mother’s 80th birthday. For a change, I decided to book us into a hotel. I had always wanted to visit Boath House, in Auldearn, but had never gotten round to it. When I discovered that it was dog friendly, and there were rooms available, I made a booking. However, it wasn’t until we arrived that I discovered two fortuitous things: 1. Boath House has a beautiful walled garden and 2. They had booked us into the Writing Studio, which is a tiny cottage built right into the wall of the walled garden!

One of the reasons we fell in love with Bossiney Court, our new home in Cornwall, is because of its walled garden, the walls of which are Grade II listed, like the house. When we took it on, the walled garden was completely overgrown with brambles, nettles, elaeagnus, leylandii, ivy, sycamores. Only the four ancient yew trees flanking the front path remained of the original planting scheme. We are in the process of clearing it so that we can restore the walls and now I am faced with the daunting challenge of re-imagining it as a new garden. I have been reading about different walled gardens and trying out a few layouts in my notebook, but the opportunity to observe another walled garden at close quarters was very exciting. I’m please to report that the garden at Boath House did not disappoint.

The main thing I appreciated about the garden is that it is surprisingly uncomplicated: there is no fancy paving or stonework; no complex benches or grottoes or water features. The paths are just a fine pink grit, and the layout is simple but enticing. Seeing an example of this is a huge relief. We don’t have a large budget for our garden, and so I am going to have to make do with found materials and cheap salvage (saving my money for the plants). The planting at Boath House is lovely: many different grasses add height and structure, so that even in late September the garden looks as full and fine as though it were late May. One third of the garden is ornamental, one third is orchard and another portion is given over to vegetable beds plus some artist studios and the (very good) restaurant.

The colour-scheme was particularly lovely: greens and yellows dominating, with muted pinks and off whites popping beneath. The effect worked marvellously whether the sky was blue or grey – something I’ve been worrying about with our garden, as Cornwall seems to be equal parts blazing sun and lowering grey. I had been thinking that it was impossible to design a planting scheme that worked equally well in both conditions, but the garden at Boath House achieves this, I think partly due to the strong yellows of some of the grasses and the acid greens of many leaves.

Another thing I particularly liked is the way the planting inside the walls complemented the colours of the gorgeous trees in the wider grounds. There isn’t a huge variety of colour outside the walls at Bossiney Court right now, but there are some wonderful mature lime trees that display the most intense greens in high summer. Hopefully one day we will have introduced more variety in terms of species, colour and shape, which can flow into – and influence – the walled garden.

We had a lovely time staying in the Writing Studio and enjoyed eating at the Garden Restaurant, taking a moonlit sauna in the wood-fired sauna cabin, exploring the wildflower meadow and sipping drinks in the beautiful rooms of Boath House. But most of all I enjoyed the opportunity to experience a fully imagined and successful garden with a lot of inspiration I can now draw from.