D1 Sunday, 20 July

Blair Castle

Tim will collect you from the Hampton by Hilton Edinburgh Airport hotel at 10 am and, after loading the minibus, we’ll drive north across the Forth of Firth for lunch and a visit to Blair Castle and its gardens.

The ancestral seat of the Clan Murray and their chief, the Duke of Atholl, Blair Castle has been their home for over seven centuries. The castle has had a diverse history, witnessing both turbulent and peaceful times, enlarged and adapted over 750 years. Home to politicians, soldiers, agriculturalists and entrepreneurs, the family history is brought to life against a backdrop of 18th-century interiors and Scots Baronial architecture. The castle’s garden, the Hercules Garden, is a nine-acre walled garden, named for the life-sized statue of Hercules overlooking the garden. It has been beautifully restored to its original Georgian design and is famous for its lily pond and Chinese bridge, its orchard and its herbaceous borders, which run the length of its 275m south-facing wall.

Blair Castle is roughly halfway to the sunny seaside town of Nairn and the Golf View Hotel & Spa, our home for the next three nights, where we will arrive in good time to relax before drinks and dinner at the hotel.

Today’s driving is approx. 160 miles/255 km

D2 Monday, 21 July

Logie, Cawdor Castle & Culbin Forest

We start the day at nearby Cawdor Castle, an impressive 14th-century fortress built by the Thanes of Cawdor, and still in the Cawdor family home some 700 years later. There are three wonderful gardens – the Walled Garden, the Flower Garden and the Wild Garden – each with its own history and story to tell. We’ll have plenty of time to explore each one and have time for the castle too.

After lunch, at Cawdor, we’ll visit Logie House Garden and Logie Steading its neighbouring business units – including the obligatory cafe, a secondhand bookshop, galleries, wine merchants and more besides, more than enough to while away an hour or so harmless browsing.

Our final visit is to Culbin Forest, a beautiful coastal pine forest planted in the 1920s to stabilise some twenty miles of sand dunes which had, at various times, threatened to swallow whole the neighboring landscape and cut off the fishing village at Findhorn. It’s a favourite place of ours, it’s where we walked every day when we lived in the area. We return to Nairn, for a stroll along the promenade and dinner at the Sun Dancer, a wonderful local restaurant with amazing views across the Moray Firth.

Today’s driving is approx. 50 miles/80 km

D3 Tuesday, 22 July

The Lookout, Old Allangrange & Inverness

We spend the day on the Black Isle, starting with a visit to The Lookout, David and Penny Veitch’s three-quarter-acre coastal garden with incredible views over the Moray Firth. This award-winning garden has been created out of bare rock and planted to its advantage to encourage wildlife. It is quite extraordinary, all the more so when you realise that everything was carted uphill by hand!

We’ll have lunch in Cromarty, a charming, well-preserved 18th-century historic town at the head of the peninsula, before the afternoon at Old Allangrange, the home and garden of our good friend JJ Gladwin. There are two distinct areas to the gardens at Old Allangrange, a three-acre ornamental garden surrounding the beautiful 17th-century house, a well-designed mix of formal shapes and loose planting, and a five-acre bio-dynamic, no-dig, organic commercial productive garden designed to provide produce for Black Isle Brewery’s outlets in Inverness and Fort William.

We return home via dinner at Rocpool on the banks of the River Ness, in downtown Inverness.

Today’s driving is approx. 100 miles/160 km

D4 Wednesday, 23 July

Elgin, Gordon Castle & Carnousie House

We leave Nairn for Elgin, the County Town of Moray, for coffee and a brief visit to Johnstons of Elgin, the world-famous textile manufacturer, famous for its fabulously expensive cashmere. We continue east to explore Gordon Castle Walled Garden, one of the oldest walled kitchen gardens in Britain and, at an impressive eight acres, one of the largest too. Angus and Zara Gordon Lennox, the new young blood at the castle, have lovingly overseen its restoration to its former glory, enhanced by a modern design by world-famous designer Arne Maynard.

We’ll have lunch at the Walled Garden’s excellent cafe before we take you on a coastal drive, via Cullen and Portsoy, to Carnousie House, our home since Christmas 2022, for an exbidition through our four-acre woodland garden, Labradors in tow, followed by tea and cake. Our final drive is through the hills to Douneside House, a truly superb hotel where we’ll spend the next four nights. As always, we’ll arrive in good time to settle in before drinks and dinner, at the hotel.

Today’s driving is approx. 125 miles/200 km

D5 Thursday, 24 July

Glenbervie, Glamis, Royal Deeside & Ballater

Our day starts with a drive over the hills to Glenbervie, a garden we first visited on its annual charity opening day this August, and one we knew our customers would love. At its heart is a Victorian walled garden, complete with a traditional well-maintained glasshouse, packed with plants and filled with a heady scent to knock your socks off.

We continue to Glamis Castle, the ancestral seat of the Earls of Strathmore and Kinghorne since 1372, the childhood home of HM Queen Elizabeth The late Queen Mother and the birthplace of HRH the late Princess Margaret, to visit both the castle and its two spectacular gardens, the Italian Garden, created by HM The Queen’s grandmother, Countess Cecelia, and the Walled Garden.

Later in the afternoon, we’ll take you on a scenic drive, via Glenshee and along Royal Deeside, through the villages of Braemar and Ballater, stopping for photographs along the way and in Ballater for dinner at the Fish Shop.

Today’s driving is approx. 150 miles/240 km

D6 Friday, 25 July

Castle Fraser, Petmedden & Fyvie

Our first visit is to Castle Fraser and its walled garden, planted with a huge range of plants, including some thought not hardy enough for inland Aberdeenshire. Castle Fraser, a huge Tower House, is famous for the 'Laird's Lug', a secret room designed to facilitate eavesdropping on Fraser's guests – not all of whom survived their stay!

Onward to Pitmedden Garden, one of the best-loved gardens in north-east Scotland, famous for its elaborate terraces, pavilions and parterres, and not a castle in sight! The garden sits on the site of a much older formal garden and, although its original layout is lost, the National Trust for Scotland made the brave decision to 'invent' a new layout, based upon a number of authentic 17th-century designs. It is a labour of love, with some 6 miles of box hedging and 30,000 to 40,000 annual bedding plants!

Finally, the risk of overdoing it, we’ll visit Fyvie Castle, an imposing 800-year-old fortress with an impressive art collection and a recently restored Walled Garden, laid out in a pattern to mirror the stunning plaster ceiling in the castle’s Dining Room.

If everyone’s agreeable, we’ll enjoy another Indian feast on our way home, in Inverurie.

Today’s driving is approx. 100 miles/160 km

D7 Saturday, 26 July

Crathes Castle & Douneside

We spend the morning at nearby Crathes Castle, the widely acknowledged flagship garden of the National Trust for Scotland collection. Built by the Burnett family, on lands given to them by Robert the Bruce in 1323, Crathes is a 16th-century tower house that replaced an earlier timber crannog. The house boasts a significant collection of portraits and original, Jacobean painted ceilings. The internationally renowned 4-acre walled garden, once visited by Gertrude Jekyll in the 1890s, was redesigned by Sir James & Sybil Burnett in the early 1900s after a visit to Lawrence Johnson’s garden at Hidcote Manor.

We return to Douneside House for the afternoon exploring its wonderful garden. Lady MacRobert developed the gardens in the early to mid-1900s with ornamental borders, an Arts and Crafts-themed terraced garden and water gardens all surrounding the spectacular infinity lawn overlooking the Deeside hills. The walled garden houses a large ornamental greenhouse and supplies organic fruit, vegetables, herbs and cut flowers to the house.

Those who wish to might like to enjoy the Health Club too, before a relaxed evening and end-of-tour dinner.

Today’s driving is approx. 50 miles/80 km

D8 Sunday, 27 July

Pitmuies & the V&A Dundee

Our final garden, Pitmuies, is one of Scotland's finest private gardens. The home of Ruaraidh and Jeanette Ogilvie, Pitmuies is a delightful 18th-century house surrounded by parkland and, at its heart, a beautiful garden. There is a series of three rose terraces and long delphinium borders, stretching the entire length of the terraces, pink and white herbaceous borders, climbing roses and a massive yew hedge that protects the whole garden from the prevailing south-west wind. It is a very beautiful garden indeed.

Our final stop is the local branch of the Victoria & Albert Museum – the V&A Dundee – where we’ll have lunch and a limited exploration of its galleries.

Then to Edinburgh Airport, where the tour ends and where we plan to be by late afternoon. Please let us know if you need to be at the airport significantly earlier than this, and we will arrange transport from Pitmuies (at your expense).

If you are staying in Scotland, and don't wish to return to Edinburgh, but would rather be dropped off elsewhere, then please let us know, so that we may assist you in getting to your next destination.

Today’s driving is approx. 130 miles/210 km