CRAIGNISH CASTLE: Mackenzie Garden
The famous Highland name 'Mackenzie’ became attached to Craignish Castle by the commission.
Linking the Gascoigne Dynasty and the 'lairds of Gairloch’ (1).
The commission c1907 was essentially a professional gardening friendship with the ambition,
’Mackenzie Garden was to be a wild exotic garden in the spirit of Inverewe’ (2)
The commission encapsulated the optimism of the Edwardian Gilded Age at the Gascoigne Scottish seat,
’Every summer the Gascoignes sailed their yacht up the coast to Inverewe where Osgood Mackenzie had begun his garden on a bare peninsula in the 1860’s’ (3)
Frederick R.T. Trench-Gascoigne and Laura Gwendolen would have been guests at Mackenzie’s Scottish Baronial Style Mansion (4)
Inverewe Botanical Garden
Inverewe and Kernsary estate was purchased by Lady Mary Mackenzie in 1862, for her son, Osgood Mackenzie. A peninsula on the shore of Loch Ewe near Poolewe, Wester Ross, Scotland. Am Ploc Ard (Gaelic name) 'the high lump’: bare rocky headland with acidic peat and overrun by rabbits.
On a latitude of 57.8 degrees, Osgood Mackenzie surprised horticultural experts by taking advantage of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.
Over forty years, shelterbelts of native Scots fir (Wellingtonias Douglas and Silver firs) were planted to break the highland gales and salty spray.
Seashore was reclaimed, by a walled garden with topsoil brought from Ireland. Cultivated along the woodland trails and in the walled garden, exotic and rare species of plants and flowers.
By the 1890’s palms and tree ferns were established. Rhododendrons from China, Nepal and Indian subcontinent. Tasmanian Eucalypts.
Olcaria from New Zealand.
(1) Osgood Hanbury Mackenzie (1842 – 1922) – 3rd son of Sir Francis Mackenzie, 5th Baronet and 12th laird of Gairloch.
(2) (3)’The Edwardian Garden at Lotherton’ (Page 6) by Mette Eggen, Published in Leeds Art Fund Calendar Issue: No.104 1989
(4) Built in baronial style in 1862-1864 and destroyed in a fire in 1914. In 1937 Mackenzie’s daughter, Mairie T.Nic Coinnich, built Inverewe House; the white-harled house and Inverewe Gardens were gifted to the National Trust in 1952