The Northern Wanderer: STOBO CASTLE HAYSTOUN MINDRUM CORSOCK HOUSE

摘要

Winter seems an appropriate time to concentrate on Scottish gardens — though even in Scotland winters recently have hardly been what they were. Winter is also a time when most of us stand in relation to the spring-summer-or-autumn-visited gardens ofother people as E. M. Forster claimed C. P. Cavafy did to the universe — at a slight angle. (In my case, increasingly, I confess without shame or guilt, that's true even of my winter relationship to my own garden.) That angle, that slight distance, alsoallows the garden-enthusiast time to consider what, beyond its actual plants or design, makes any particular garden stand out. For me what often seems to do the trick is a particularly personal response to a particular site. A few scattered Scottish examples follow.