|
National Museum of Rural Life Scotland
|
Autumn.
Autumn at Kittochside sees the harvest brought in and livestock move 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 creating changing 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 years animals looking forward to a new spring.
The Garden:
The garden at Kittochside is made up of two elements, ornamental garden and 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 and contains mainly evergreen small trees and bushes kept trimmed to rounded and flat topped shapes, including hollies, yews, cypresses, laurels plus 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 giving a show of colour from early spring, including snowdrops, crocus, daffodil and bluebells.
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 contains an ornamental element in the herbaceous borders, which produce a show of colour throughout the summer and is enhanced by box hedges.
The philosophy for 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.
|
|