Drummond Castle Gardens

Drummond Castle Gardens

Widely regarded as Scotland's finest formal garden, the extraordinary terraced parterre at Drummond was laid out in the 1830s to a design said to follow the shape of the Cross of St Andrew, with paths radiating from a central sundial dating to about 1630. Thick, ancient yew hedges frame the garden, their dense dark green providing a majestic backdrop to the intricate geometric planting. The garden was originally created by Lewis Kennedy, whose family ran the famous Vineyard Nursery in London and supplied plants to Empress Josephine at Malmaison; he brought here not only design expertise but access to the finest exotic plants of the age. Abandoned after the Jacobite rising of 1745 and later restored, it remains a masterpiece of formal landscaping — a fusion of French and Italian influences set within the Scottish landscape, where the carefully composed pattern contrasts beautifully with the rolling countryside beyond.