Castle Gardens: Scott MacCallum discovers that a successful garden is a key component to a successful Estate.
Kelso’s Floors Castle, in the beautifully unspoilt Scottish Borders, is a place where no two days are ever the same. If it’s a three day event on the equestrian diary; outdoor Shakespeare theatre in the summer; commercial farming; among the finest fishing and shooting to be found anywhere… or even a Michael Bublé concert, there is always something going on at Roxburghe Estate, to give it its correct title.
Castle Gardens
The grounds are stunning, stretching across a whopping 50,000 acres and including the Tweed and Teviot rivers. They also boast Floors, Scotland’s largest inhabited castle.
Also, if you listen carefully you might just hear a familiar cry and notice a rustling of the trees in the woods. The reason?
The castle featured in the 1984 movie Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes!
It takes a lot to run such an Estate, but key to much that goes on are the spectacular gardens which provide not just a tranquil sanctuary for those lucky enough to walk among them, but fresh produce for the Duke and the Castle’s residents and guests but for sale in the Castle shop too.
For example, there is a white board in the mess room identifying all the Estate shooting parties so that he can ensure there are flowers, looking their best, in each of the guest bedrooms.
The man tasked with making sure everything is looking as good as it is edible is Head Gardener Simon McManus.
Simon runs the gardens with a team of four who look after the vegetable gardens and the show gardens including the five acre Millenium Garden, which has around two miles of edging all of
which is now cut by strimmers, a task which takes two days given favourable weather and carried out once a week. The walled old garden is another four acres, and also contains a number of glass houses.
The Millenium Garden features two miles of edging, and is cut by strimmer.
“It used to be cut by hand shears and would take five or six of us all day. With a strimmer you can do it all edging in a day, weather permitting and it’s done once a week, but that’s going some.
“The groundsman does it and he’s got a routine. So he’ll start here and hopefully get back to here within the week, and then start all over again. It doesn’t take much to knock them off – an afternoon of rain or a machine breakdown.”
Simon has been at Floors for over 20 years and Head Gardener for the last two. His fellow gardeners have arrived at the Castle, and in the horticultural industry, following careers in anything ranging from grave digging to owning a recruitment business.
“We work well as a team, which is good. On the big jobs, we just get stuck in. Like today we’re picking apples and we’re all on it,” said Mark, adding that this was something new.
“Previously, the apples just went to waste as we didn’t get any revenue for them, Now, as a new venture, a company is going to produce cider for us and we need to collect all the apples we can to provide the juice,” he explained.
Castle Gardens
It’s not just the weather that can get in the way of the smooth running of the gardens.
“Breakdowns are a real nuisance. You’ve got a job on and then the machine doesn’t start. Last week, the Kubota machine had two punctures. One step forward and one step sideways!”
They do embrace modern technology and had introduced a robot mower to the team.
“We have a Husqvarna robot mower. It does a very good job because it’s cutting it constantly, it’s not like it gets to grow two inches and then cut back. We also got a new piece of kit last year, called the Foam Stream which uses heat to destroy weeds.”
How does the work fall on an annual basis?
“September is probably the quietest month of the year – everything’s done! Over the next few months we’ll be cutting back herbaceous borders and take them right back.
Then we’ll be on with the pruning, rose pruning, apple pruning, the plums. And that’ll keep us busy. Peaches, that’s quite labour-intensive because they’re all tied in a traditional method which looks great but takes time. It’s always been done like that and it’s nice to keep it going. When you get it done just perfectly, it does look good.
“And that’ll take us right up to Christmas and beyond,” said Simon, who also conducts pruning workshops in the garden.
The Castle gardens are very popular with the many visitors who are attracted to Floors and while many are pleased and interested to see the quality of the work carried out, others can be more critical.
“Sometimes they say that we should have had X or Y harvested by that time in the year. But if we did that they’d have nothing to look at! Also with just four gardeners there is a limit to what we can do and sometimes there have to be compromises made.”
The new year starts with seed sowing.
“We’ll start with leeks and onions,and the like and that will run through sort of into May, April, March and April when we carry our propagation and more seed sowing, bedding plants, veg plants, plants for the castle,” explained Simon, who nets the herbaceous borders.
Simon’s team are experienced in years but have arrived in the world of horticulture via previous lives. For example Kate McClorey, Assistant Head Gardener and current Scottish Garden Designer of the Year worked in the world or recruitment, while Mark Baldwin was a grave digger.
Claire Nicho also had various jobs before finally arriving at the Castle.
Prior to taking over as Head Gardener, Simon used to be in sole charge of the glasshouses.
“That was my thing. All I did was the glasshouses. Now managing the garden and the glasshouses is hard going, particularly when you’re hands-on.”
His ambition when he took over his new role was to make his mark.
“I wanted to raise the standard up to the sort of next level. And the feedback we’ve had this year from the visitors is all very positive. Many saying that this is probably one of the nicest gardens that they’ve seen.“
But he is aware that without bigger budgets, a dream to all but the very few, there are compromises that have to be made.
“If I had more staff, I’d have the lawns weed free and cut with a cylinder mower so we’d get beautiful stripes.”
It’s fair to say that in the last two years Simon has earned his own stripes and is delighted to be working as such a special place as Floors Castle.
“It’s a good place to work and it’s certainly not a drudge getting out of bed in the morning to come here.”
Simon and his team are a key cog in the whole Roxburghe Estate operation and the dedication and hard work shown by them show ensure that the Estate and the iconic Floors Castle will remain as one of the country’s foremost tourist destinations.
