The Scottish Borders is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, East Lothian, Midlothian, South Lanarkshire, West Lothian and, to the south-west, south and east, the English counties of Cumbria and Northumberland. The administrative centre of the area is Newtown St Boswells.
Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennials, and nearly all annuals and biennials.
A shrubbery, shrub border or shrub garden is a part of a garden where shrubs, mostly flowering species, are thickly planted. The original shrubberies were mostly sections of large gardens, with one or more paths winding through it, a less-remembered aspect of the English landscape garden with very few original 18th-century examples surviving. As the fashion spread to smaller gardens, linear shrub borders covered up walls and fences, and were typically underplanted with smaller herbaceous flowering plants. By the late 20th century, shrubs, trees and smaller plants tend to be mixed together in the most visible parts of the garden, hopefully blending successfully. At the same time, shrubs, especially very large ones, have become part of the woodland garden, mixed in with trees, both native species and imported ornamental varieties.
Potentilla is a genus containing over 300 species of annual, biennial and perennial herbaceous flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae.
William Robinson was an Irish practical gardener and journalist whose ideas about wild gardening spurred the movement that led to the popularising of the English cottage garden, a parallel to the search for honest simplicity and vernacular style of the British Arts and Crafts movement, and were important in promoting the woodland garden. Robinson is credited as an early practitioner of the mixed herbaceous border of hardy perennial plants, a champion too of the "wild garden", who vanquished the high Victorian pattern garden of planted-out bedding schemes. Robinson's new approach to gardening gained popularity through his magazines and several books—particularly The Wild Garden, illustrated by Alfred Parsons, and The English Flower Garden.
Crathes Castle is a 16th-century castle near Banchory in the Aberdeenshire region of Scotland. It is in the historic county of Kincardineshire. This harled castle was built by the Burnetts of Leys and was held in that family for almost 400 years. The castle and grounds are owned and managed by the National Trust for Scotland and are open to the public.
Durham Castle is a Norman castle in the city of Durham, England, which has been occupied since 1837 by University College, Durham after its previous role as the residence of the Bishops of Durham. Designated since 1986 as a cultural World Heritage Site in England, along with Durham Cathedral, the facility is open to the general public to visit, but only through guided tours, since it is in use as a working building and is home to over 100 students. The castle stands on top of a hill above the River Wear on Durham's peninsula, opposite Durham Cathedral.
A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also widely used to distinguish plants with little or no woody growth from trees and shrubs, which are also technically perennials.
The University of Oxford Botanic Garden is the oldest botanic garden in Great Britain and one of the oldest scientific gardens in the world. The garden was founded in 1621 as a physic garden growing plants for medicinal research. Today it contains over 5,000 different plant species on 1.8 ha. It is one of the most diverse yet compact collections of plants in the world and includes representatives from over 90% of the higher plant families.
Myrrhis odorata, with common names cicely, sweet cicely, myrrh, garden myrrh, and sweet chervil, is a herbaceous perennial plant belonging to the celery family Apiaceae. It is the only species in the genus Myrrhis.
Fidra is a currently uninhabited island in the Firth of Forth, 4 kilometres northwest of North Berwick, on the east coast of Scotland. The island is an RSPB Scotland nature reserve.
The cottage garden is a distinct style that uses informal design, traditional materials, dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants. English in origin, it depends on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure. Homely and functional gardens connected to cottages go back centuries, but their stylized reinvention occurred in 1870s England, as a reaction to the more structured, rigorously maintained estate gardens with their formal designs and mass plantings of greenhouse annuals.
Sir Robert Stodart Lorimer, KBE was a prolific Scottish architect and furniture designer noted for his sensitive restorations of historic houses and castles, for new work in Scots Baronial and Gothic Revival styles, and for promotion of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Myres Castle is a Scottish castle situated in Fife near the village of Auchtermuchty. Its history is interleaved with that of nearby Falkland Palace with present-day castle construction dating to 1530. The castle and magnificent Scottish garden are now operated as a private conference centre with lodging.
Dirleton is a village and civil parish in East Lothian, Scotland approximately 20 miles (32 km) east of Edinburgh on the A198. It contains 7,500 acres (30 km2). Dirleton lies between North Berwick (east), Gullane (west), Fenton Barns (south) and the Yellowcraigs nature reserve, Archerfield Estate and the Firth of Forth (north). Gullane parish was joined to Dirleton parish in 1612 by an Act of Parliament because "Golyn is ane decaying toun, and Dirleton is ane thriven place."
Dirleton Castle is a medieval fortress in the village of Dirleton, East Lothian, Scotland. It lies around 2 miles (3.2 km) west of North Berwick, and around 19 miles (31 km) east of Edinburgh. The oldest parts of the castle date to the 13th century, and it was abandoned by the end of the 17th century.
The Sir Harold Hillier Gardens is an arboretum comprising 72 hectares accommodating over 42,000 trees and shrubs in about 12,000 taxa, notably a collection of oaks, camellia, magnolia and rhododendron.
A flower garden or floral garden is any garden or part of a garden where plants that flower are grown and displayed. This normally refers mostly to herbaceous plants, rather than flowering woody plants, which dominate in the shrubbery and woodland garden, although both these types may be part of the planting in any area of the garden.
In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicinal purposes, or for fragrances. Culinary use typically distinguishes herbs from spices. Herbs generally refers to the leafy green or flowering parts of a plant, while spices are usually dried and produced from other parts of the plant, including seeds, bark, roots and fruits.
The feudal barony of Dirleton was a feudal barony with its caput baronium originally at Castle Tarbet, Elbottle Castle and later at Dirleton Castle in East Lothian, Scotland. The Lordship & Barony of Dirleton lies in East Lothian a few miles west of North Berwick, the land comprising the Caput of the Barony are today only a little over 40 acres, including the Island of Lamb, North and South Dogs in the east coast of Scotland. Its ruined castle, two triangular greens and the buildings are grouped in the traditional style of a medieval township. Dirleton Castle was built in the middle of the twelfth century by a branch of the Anglo-Norman family of De Vaux, a family with its origins in Rouen, Normandy, which had settled in Dirleton during the reign of King Malcolm IV (1153-1165). The original castle was modelled on contemporary French castles, in particular Coucy la Chateaux north of Paris. Dirleton Castle was strenuously defended against the invading army of Edward I of England in June 1298, but eventually fell to Anthony Beck, the fighting Bishop of Durham. In 1311 the castle was recaptured by the Scots and Robert the Bruce ordered that it be reduced to eliminate the possibility of it being occupied by the English in the future. Dirleton was in the hands of the De Vaux family for about two centuries.
