Why we love Pitmedden Garden

Transcript

Three voices: Pilar Medrano Dell, Head Gardener; Paul, visitor; Libby Thomas-Wright, Visitor Services Assistant

Pilar
I'm Pilar Medrano Dell. I'm the head gardener at Pitmedden Garden for the National Trust for Scotland.
Pitmedden Garden is a very important garden in garden history.
It's one of the great gardens and it's in Aberdeenshire.
It's a 17th-century garden but we have incorporated some contemporary borders,so that we mix the formal and the contemporary.
It's a really good place to come and just enjoy.
The garden is really a walled garden.
The features that we can see now are all original from the 17th century.
It has parterres; it has modern borders; it has formality; it has informality.
We are actually surrounded by the borrowed landscape of woodland.

We have these new deconstructed parterres, which are modern and full of flowers -- very floriferous.
It's a great attraction and it's something that also attracts a lot of wildlife.
We have lots of bees flying around.
And, it's a very low maintenance garden in terms of the input.It requires less watering, requires less fertilisers, less chemicals.
But at the same time, it has a very specific maintenance.
The idea was to have a little bit of everything really and maybe elongate the season, so that when you come to Pitmedden Garden, you have a lot more, well into the autumn.

The people that come to Pitmedden Garden can be from lots of different backgrounds.
We have local people that have been coming to the garden for a long time, maybe over generations they actually have volunteered here or maybe their family have worked here or they've got lots of memories about the garden.
So, that's fantastic because it's part of the community.
But we also have a lot of tourism that comes to visit the garden.
Lots of families too -- they come and enjoy with the children because it's got lots of really nice space to play around.
And of course, we have a really nice cafe and a shop.

What I love about Pitmedden is that you walk around the garden and in each area of the garden you can find something completely different.
We have herbaceous borders.
We have formality.
We have lots of fruit trees -- we have about 180 cultivars of apple.
And in the morning, when I do the round of the garden, that peace ... that's the moment when I really enjoy the garden!
It's the time when I look at what's happening in there.
For me, it's really important that we have a fantastic team actually -- a super knowledgeable team of gardeners that are really committed and really, really passionate about what they're doing.
We have also a great team of volunteers that have been coming for years and they've got so much knowledge and they know very well what they're doing.
They're embedded in the team and that gives a fantastic atmosphere really.

Paul
I'm Paul. I'm from Holland.
I love gardens and castles as well, so Scotland is a very interesting destination for me.
I decided to visit these gardens because they told me it's very beautiful ... and I'm not disappointed!
They are lovely.
I can recommend to everyone this garden.
It was magnificent.

Libby
My name's Libby. I work for the National Trust for Scotland here at Pitmedden Garden in Visitor Services.
What is fantastic about the job that I do is people come in not knowing what they're going to expect; and whether they arrive happy or stressed or cheerful or however they arrive, when they leave, they're always smiling and calmer -- that's the magic of the garden.
I love Pitmedden Garden because of its tranquil atmosphere, its history.
There's literally things for every member of the family to do, and I love watching that happen.
When children come in and we give them a bug hunt to do, and they really look into the flowers to find the insects.

What I love most is the fact that it brings happiness to lots of people.
And at the end of the day, when I have to lock the doors, I get to walk round and enjoy it all to myself, which is lovely!
Pitmedden Garden is good for the soul and everybody that works here knows that, and everybody that visits here knows that, and the way we garden now is good for the planet as well.
I would say that a visit to Pitmedden Garden just uplifts you and just creates something marvellous in your life for the time that you're here, and to take away with you as well.