Crarae Garden versus the forces of water

The burn then absorbs the water and it’s discharged, as one of many freshwater contributories, into Loch Fyne. But our story doesn’t end there. The burn has been in existence for millennia, changing direction and shape, carving out the gorge through the eroding forces of water. This is nature at its persistent best, unfettered by anthropogenic activities.

However, over the last 110 years this landscape has been shaped by various garden and woodland developments. Crarae Garden today is a classic example of how garden design creates something and subsequently attempts to work with, and in part control, at least one aspect of nature – in this case water.

The visitor experience in this area of the garden is mainly focused on walking alongside and crossing the burn, which offers numerous photogenic opportunities, particularly when the plants are at their floristic best. But in 2004 the path here experienced ‘wash out’ (where rainwater washed away the path), which was duly repaired, and more recently in 2020 the same path’s profile was further exacerbated by the increasingly intense storm events that washed many boulders down the burn. The gardeners on site thought that they were hearing loud thunder, but they were in fact hearing the large boulders smashing into each other!

When considered in the face of a changing climate, these events, augmented by additional burn wall-edge erosion issues, could mean that we will experience more frequent and potentially more damaging erosion to one of our key natural heritage assets. So, I feel that we’re entering a time of adaptation at Crarae Garden, and probably at many of our other designed landscapes. The Trust must lay down the practical steps needed to ensure these assets will still be here for future generations to experience. To that end, we will be taking immediate action at Crarae to repair the washed-out section of path, while making strategic decisions to create long-term practical solutions in mitigation of and adaptation to gardening in a changing climate.