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National Museum of Rural Life Scotland
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Autumn
Autumn at Kittochside sees the harvest brought in and livestock moved to winter quarters. Milking continues daily until mid-November, but cattle are likely to be housed now and feeding occupies the farm day. The fields and garden can change dramatically from week to week, creating endlessly varied views and atmosphere.
Winter
The fields often appear to be in suspended animation at this time, occasionally blanketed in snow, but the livestock are preparing for another season. Our calves are born from January and mark the start of a new season of growth on the farm. The foal show in December shows us the best of the year’s animals, and looks forward to a new spring.
The Garden
The garden at Kittochside is made up of two elements: an ornamental garden and a kitchen garden.
The ornamental garden consists of a clipped shrubbery between the two forks of the east drive adjoining the east gable of the house. It contains mainly evergreen small trees and bushes, kept trimmed to rounded and flat-topped shapes, and includes hollies, yews, cypresses, laurels and rhododendron.
To the front of the house is the lawn, containing shaped rose beds. It is bordered on three sides by rhododendron and holly trees. The areas either side of the lawn are planted out with a selection of spring bulbs – including snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils and bluebells – which give a show of colour from early spring.
At the bottom of the sloping path leading down from the house is the kitchen garden. It demonstrates components of a typical well-stocked farmhouse garden, producing vegetables, fruit and flowers. In the 1950s home produce was still very much a part of rural and urban life, and a well-kept garden was an important feature. Although the garden was primarily a productive garden, it does contain an ornamental element in the herbaceous borders, which produce a show of colour throughout the summer, and it is further enhanced by box hedges.
The philosophy behind the preservation of the garden is to present it as it probably would have looked in the 1950s, retaining the influences of Mr and Mrs Reid.
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