Why we love Drum Castle, Garden & Estate

Transcript

Laurence Daguin (LD), Muriel (M), Liz (L), Carol (C), Muir Urquhart (MU), Isaac (I), Aude Raynal (AR), two male volunteers together: Tim with tie (T) and Robert (R)

LD – Drum Castle walled garden showcases four centuries of rose growing and garden design. The walled garden is split into four time periods: the 16th and 17th centuries, the 18th-century bosquet garden, the Victorian garden and the naturalistic 20th-century garden.
When you come to Drum you can expect a diverse experience of ambience, of styles, from dancing geometry to straight lines or very naturalistic plantings. From one block to the next, you will not experience the same thing.
I love this place because it’s like travelling through time in a garden. Four centuries, you can wander in the garden and find very different styles, features, colours and textures.

MU – I just love this place because it’s a beautiful place to work, first and foremost. I’m learning something new every day and it’s given me a better appreciation of the Trust. I’ve been a member for over 30 years but working here for the last 3 years has let me see just what it’s all about. It’s just a wonderful place to work.

M – I love this place because it’s just such a tranquil place with lots of lovely plants around. And I really love plants, of any description, so I feel quite at home here.

AR – I came here in 2019 for two months and I just stayed because I love so much this garden. I was volunteering and after I had a seasonal job I came back a second time because I really adore this garden and the team. The team is great; we work really well together.
I was doing inside jobs before and I was working in an office and I just love to be outside, to be in contact with nature more because I was never in contact with nature before and it’s fantastic, to see all the bees, we have so many bees right now. The birds, the bees, all the nature is coming back together. To see the plants growing, in winter they are all cut down and they are growing slowly in spring and in summer they just flourish. And I just see the life and it’s just amazing, it’s really great.


M – I love this part just as you come in round the corner here because it opens up and you can see the whole garden, and particularly at this time of year, when you’ve got the roses over the arches and the fantastic roses over the building at the back, it just looks stunning, absolutely stunning and the whole garden just comes alive when you come round the corner here.
There’s a lot of people that, because it’s a walled garden, it’s hidden and they’re not aware that it’s here, and once you come through the wall, it’s wow! It’s like another world when you come in here. Since I came to volunteer, I’m always telling my friends: oh, you have to go out to Drum and have a look at the garden. They’re beautiful, it’s absolutely beautiful. We’re so fortunate to have this here on our doorstep in Aberdeen, we really are.

I – I love this place because it means we can preserve what could have potentially been lost. In between 1989 and 1991 this whole place was a blank canvas and what you see before you here is what has been developed since then. My favourite place within the garden would be probably the 20th century because, while the other quarters are heavily on the aspect of roses, the 20th century is where the herbaceous really kicks in and fills it out nicely.

T & R – I love this place. It’s a very pleasant place to be. It’s always changing, so if you come back from one week to the next it’s different. Kids love the garden. They play hide and seek with all the hedges and things. They can run around and make lots of noise.

L – This garden, above many others I’ve been into, has what you call a spirit of place. When you come in, the whole world stills down and you’ve just got this wall and the lovely plants and it just gives you a lovely feeling of peace. There’s so much to look at in terms of the plantings at different times of the year. It’s wonderful really. I think it’s the best garden in Scotland for being in, yeah.

LD – I’m really proud of my team - the garden staff and garden volunteers - as the garden requires a lot of horticulture skills and a very versatile approach of gardening. Gardens are important cultural places and an essential part of all heritage, where the living heritage is just before your eyes and deploys its beauty at any time of the season. In each season, there is always something different to see.