“A garden from scratch – starting out again!” – Ian & Carol Bainbridge (with Scottish Rock Garden Club)

In 2009 Ian & Carol decided where they wanted to be after they retired and decided they did not need to be close to Edinburgh.  In early 2010 they bought Luckie Harg’s, near Gatehouse of Fleet in Galloway, south-west Scotland.  A house with just under an acre of garden, down to grass and roe deer, meant they were starting a new garden from scratch, much as they had done near Edinburgh over 25 years earlier.  They kept both properties until they retired, giving themselves five years to move plants to the new garden.  A nice idea, but when they moved to Galloway in 2015,  they left far more plants behind than they planned.  In 2018 they added to the new garden when they bought almost an acre of woodland bluebell bank beyond the fence.  This is being restored to deciduous woodland.  The garden was fenced in 2010 as there are both roe and fallow deer in the woods and hares in the fields around.  They then began creating the new garden.  This talk follows the development of the garden and its plants.

Carole and Ian are both Past Presidents of the Sottish Rock Garden Club and have been growing alpines for over forty years.  Their special interests include trilliums, arisaemas, roscoeas and dwarf narcissi, and they particularly enjoy building crevice gardens and growing ‘proper alpines’ in them. They are both members of the RHS Joint Rock Garden Plant Committee, and manage the Seed Reception for the SRGC Seed Exchange, one of the biggest and oldest in the world, usually offering over 3000 taxa.

Luckie Harg’s is open by invitation under Scotland’s Gardens Scheme and Ian and Carole are very happy to welcome groups or individuals by arrangement.

Our talks take place in the Lecture Theatre at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. All talks will begin at 7.30pm. The talks are free and are open to non-members.  No need to book, just come along on the day. All we ask is that you make a small donation at the door or perhaps buy a raffle ticket if you can.  For those who have not attended a lecture at RBGE before, entry is via the main reception: 20a Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR (not far from the East Gate).