Horticulture

Our horticulture programme at Hospitalfield is centred around the learning and growing which happens inside and outside the walls of our enclosed garden. 

Hospitalfield’s walled garden is distinct in its layout as it adheres to the old mediaeval style which places the house as its fourth wall of the enclosure. The grand house and the double wall which encloses the garden offers a sheltered and uniquely mild coastal micro-climate for the plants growing inside, enabling the cultivation of plants not typically suited to the East coast of Scotland. 

The garden has gone through many changes since it was first established by the Benedictine Tironesian order of monks in the 13th century. With this long history in mind, Hospitalfield appointed horticulturist Nigel Dunnet to design a garden that would tell 800 years of garden history. Dunnet’s design features a formal garden framed by hornbeam hedges and a central axis that links views from the house to the entrance of the lower walled garden. To the left of the central axis lies the Hospitalfield Physic Garden, which features many of the herbs which monks would have treated with during the site’s early days as a hospital. To the right is an orchard of heritage apple varieties growing above a perennial meadow. The lower walled garden is less formal and more romantic. It features colour themed planting sections with species and shrub roses as well as ever-evolving planting sections for Garden Club volunteers to grow vegetables and other edible flowers, fruits and herbs. 

Within the walled garden lies a glazed fernery which was designed by Patrick Allan-Fraser in 1872 and restored by architects Caruso St. John. The fernery originally housed a collection of New Zealand tree ferns which were gifted to Allan-Fraser and now hosts a collection of ferns generously donated by the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, many of which were likely to have been part of the original collection. 

Our programme explores Hospitalfield’s horticultural history and future via a range of walks, talks and workshops which centre on themes arising from within and without the double walls of our walled garden. 

Hospitalfield’s programme for 2024 explores the theme ‘Grain.’ In response to that theme, our Garden Club volunteers will be participating in Scotland The Bread’s Soil-to-Slice project where we grow spring varieties of Wheat and Rye in the walled garden, eventually to harvest, thresh, mill and bake into a loaf of bread. Find out more about our programme here. 

Hospitalfield’s grounds and gardens are supported by our Community Gardener Carley Wootton, groundsman Ross Foreman and a dedicated group of Garden Club volunteers who come together weekly to tend the garden.

‘’My aim for the design at Hospitalfield is to create a framework for exploration and discovery of the diverse histories and productive and symbolic uses of plants over the 800 years of the gardens’ existence, from their Medieval monastic origins through to the heights of Victorian exotica.’’

– Nigel Dunnett, Garden Designer

“This is our first project in Scotland, and it has been an interesting challenge working with the materials and details of the Arts and Crafts architecture, to make additions that feel like a renewal, and more than a restoration. The first part of the project includes the rebuilding of the fernery in the corner of the garden, with a new glass roof above the old stone walls, with their grottoes and galleries. It is a small but spectacular building that will add something really distinctive to the site.” 

– Peter St John of Caruso St John Architects

The Physic Garden at Hospitalfield tells the story of the monastic herb gardening through three key themes:

The Doctrine of Signatures, a thirteenth century theory which posits that the medicinal functions of plants are reflected in their resemblance to the body parts and the conditions which they treat. 

Roots, Shoots and Flowers: Natural Dyes, a theme which explores the colourful range of dyes which can be derived from different parts of the whole plant.

The Sensory Garden, a theme which excites the sense of smell, taste and touch in our garden’s visitors.

Completed in June 2023, the Physic Garden project is the work of herbalist Terrill Dobson and community gardener Carley Wootton who researched, designed and planted the garden along with volunteers, adding to Nigel Dunnet’s original design traditional monastic herbs which best exemplify these three themes. The design of the Physic Garden adheres to a formal symmetry with mirrored planting reflected diagonally on both sides of the quadrant of sixteen garden beds. 

The perennial meadow was seeded at the end of 2022 with the help of garden designer Jane Porter and many enthusiastic volunteers. It features three distinct seed mixes designed by Nigel Dunnet: ‘Moody Blues,’ ‘Lime Light’ and ‘Woodland Edge.’ These three unique mixes offer distinct colour palettes and suit the directional positions of the orchard and its varying conditions. The meadow supports the wildlife in the garden, offering colourful wildflowers for bees to pollinate and a source of seed for birds to eat. These carefully designed seed mixes will establish over the next few years.   

Above the meadow grow nineteen Scottish heritage apple varieties, among them the Arbroath Pippin and the more infamous Bloody Ploughman. The Arbroath Pippin or ‘Oslin’ is one of Scotland’s oldest varieties dating back to the 17th century and was brought to Arbroath from France by an order of Benedictine monks who established the Abbey and then by the 13th century Hospitalfield. It is a flavourful eating apple with a slightly spiced aniseed flavour and we are very fortunate to have it growing here in our orchard. The Bloody Ploughman is known for its striking red interior and gets its namesake from an old tale of a ploughman who was caught stealing apples from the Megginch Estate and was shot dead by its gamekeeper. The story goes that when the ploughman’s body was returned to his wife, she found the stolen apples in his pockets and chucked them onto a rubbish heap. From this heap grew the apple variety we now know with its deep blood-red colour. 

The Fernery was restored by Architects Caruso St. John after the original Grotto-style building designed by Patrick Allan-Fraser in 1872 fell into disrepair during the mid 20th-century. Conservation architects Simpson & Brown advised on this project and it was completed and opened its doors to the public in 2021. The Fernery offers two levels for visitors to explore the fern collection from different perspectives and the ferns to grow in varying degrees of sunlight. 

The Fernery at Hospitalfield is filled with a collection of ferns donated by the Royal Botanics in Edinburgh and features a wide range of ferns as well as a young Wollemi Pine. The fernery houses a Dicksonia squarrosa and Dicksonia antarctica, a New Zealand and Tasmanian tree fern, respectively. These tree ferns were the original species for which Patrick Allan Fraser constructed the fernery. While the original tree ferns from his collection did not survive the disrepair the building fell into in the 1920s, a different species of fern did. This stout survivor has not been officially identified, but is believed to be a Polydium cambricum ‘Carew Lane.’ 

Other highlights from the collection include ferns endemic to the U.K. like the Royal Crested Fern and ferns introduced to the U.K. from Asia and the Americas such as the Shearer’s Felt Fern and the Leather Polypody. Hospitalfield is lucky to have such a varied collection of ferns which we hope, overtime, to grow. 

The Romantic Garden features sixteen distinct planting sections divided by hornbeam hedges. These sections are filled with colour-themed beds designed by Nigel Dunnet, shrub and species roses as well as many other shrubs of berries and blackcurrants. Snuggly buffered between the garden’s double walls, the exceptional warmth of the romantic garden reaps a number of espaliered fruit trees such as pears, cherries and figs. 

Other sections of the Romantic Garden were left intentionally blank for our Garden Club volunteers to grow annual vegetables. This part of the garden also features some perennial plants for food such as rhubarb, perpetual onion, sorrel and jerusalem artichoke. For our next garden project, we hope to create a permanent vegetable patch composed primarily of perennials. 

In September 2020 over 30 volunteers with horticulturalist Nigel Dunnett and landscape architect Ed Payne planted over 7000 plants for the new Garden inspired by Hospitalfield’s 800 year garden history.