The PLANTS project: Falkland Palace – the Percy Cane garden

If you are unfamiliar with Percy Cane, the British horticultural writer Anna Pavord called him ’the Thirties’ answer to Edwin Lutyens.’ [1] Horticulturalist Arthur Hellyer wrote of Cane as a ‘designer who planned bold effects and those that have survived have very much stood the test of time.’[2] Cane’s style can be seen as an alternative to the pre-1914 labour-intensive bedding schemes. He designed gardens centred around shrubs and trees laid out informally, often with long curving borders that created woodland or semi-woodland glades. In his book, Garden Design of Today, written in 1934, he stated, ’no part of the garden is easier to make and to maintain, nor lovelier, than a well-designed and carefully planted glade of trees and shrubs.’ He believed that harmony and appeal in garden design resulted from the ’simplest arrangement of walk or lawn or flowers … far better to be satisfied with the severest simplicity than to admit one particle of over-ornamentation, sham or fakeness.’

The Crichton-Stuart family envisioned the new palace garden with inspiration drawn from the interplay of the palace’s elevation and the terraced garden levels, as illustrated in John Slezer’s 1693 engraving (pictured above), The Prospect of Falkland from the East in Theatrum Scotiae. To realise this vision, they incorporated historical elements, such as stone urns and mounting blocks from the nearby House of Falkland, vacated around 1947 and repurposed as a school. Further enriching the garden’s historical character, stone steps from the ruined Temple of Decision in the woods above the House of Falkland were included.

The Falkland Palace planting began in 1948 and was specifically designed to accentuate parts of the original buildings through the use of columnar Chamaecyparis on the edges of the middle terrace (replaced in 1977). A central glade runs parallel to the enclosing walls along the length of the lower garden (the principal pleasure garden). Cane also created a pond garden, designed later in 1954–55, before the visit of the Queen Mother. This is separated from the rest of the lower garden by a hedge, accessed through a gap and flanked by two stone urns.

The planting in the main garden consisted of trees and shrubs, including cherries, Philadelphus, Ceanothus and Cytisus, underplanted with herbaceous material. No Cytisus are remaining, but the project found four of the six cultivars of Philadelphus (‘Aureus’, ‘Beauclerk’, ‘Virginal’ and ‘Sybille’) were Cane original plantings. During our survey, we also audited two impressive Prunus ‘Kanzan’, which stand at the entrance to the pond garden and date from the Percy Cane planting; they were in full flower for the PLANTS team.

A west-facing border filled with soft-coloured herbaceous plants was complemented by an extended east-facing border (the long border) with intense colours. Six half-moon island beds planted with shrubs, and sub-shrubs, provided structure and interest in different seasons. They performed another function by preventing everything from being on view at once. The beds, alleys and vistas show the palace from various angles and give the impression that the garden is more significant than it is. The west-facing border (pictured below) was initially planted with lupins, but these had to be replaced with delphiniums as the lupins succumbed to disease even as early as 1950. Before our visit, the once-magnificent display of Blackmore and Langdon Nursery delphiniums had been removed due to disease. The future planting of the border is being debated, demonstrating how complex the conservation of historic gardens can be.

By the 1970s, the garden was becoming over-mature, and some trees that had begun to shade the herbaceous border and shrub plantings had been removed. As time passed, some plants replaced others, and unfortunately, there was no detailed information on the plants used for the island beds. Some plants are known, but any lists are incomplete, so restoring the original plantings is impossible. Some known plants are no longer available, having been lost to cultivation or replaced with more recent equivalents. Significant changes occurred in 1978; further losses and replacements were recorded in 1987–88. Replanting proposals ’in the style of Percy Cane’ were drawn up in 2016. The gardeners who continue to develop and maintain the gardens to a high standard have implemented many of these.

The PLANTS project team were able to successfully confirm the continued existence of 44 mature shrubs dating from the Percy Cane planting, including fine specimens such as the beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) and lilac (Syringa vulgaris) ‘Andenken an Ludwig Späth’. These plants are living links to Falkland’s garden heritage. Percy Cane was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s Veitch Memorial medal in 1963 and continued working until he suffered a stroke in 1972 and entered a nursing home until he died in 1976. Falkland Palace is one of two gardens wholly or partly designed by Cane in Scotland, designated ’of national importance’ and included on Historic Environment Scotland’s Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. His work at Falkland Palace ’gives (the gardens) outstanding value as a work of art.’ Cane’s other Scottish garden is the river garden he designed for Monteviot, Jedburgh, in the 1960s.

Thanks go to the Crichton-Stuart family for using material from their archive and to Marietta Crichton-Stuart for helpful information and advice about the garden’s history.

Sources:

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/property/gardening/gardening-sleeping-beauty-is-awakened-a-fairytale-garden-neglected-for-decades-has-at-last-emerged-into-the-light-anna-pavord-was-bewitched-1430181.html

[2] The Oxford Companion to the Garden, ed. Patrick Taylor, ‘Cane, Percy’ https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780198662556.001.0001/acref-9780198662556-e-0305