Gardens: Traquair House a piece of living history, not a museum, says Catherine Maxwell Stuart

Published on Wednesday 22 February 2012 19:22

STANDING at the centre of a group of ancient yew trees, you begin to understand the magical nature of Traquair. Only a few metres away, a well-clipped maze can hold you as tightly as any embrace. It’s this duality of nature and formality that runs through these grounds.

On the banks of the Tweed, near Innerleithen in Peeblesshire, Traquair is both an ancient seat and working grounds, with many secrets to be revealed.

Catherine Maxwell Stuart almost apologises for not referring to Traquair as a garden, because of the lack of formal design or herbaceous borders. But the grounds are split into various uses or have pivotal features that mean this is far more than a wild landscape and woodland. There is no great plan to return the grounds to the formality they once had, but the family and the two full-time gardeners have begun restoring plants that would have been grown in the 18th century, such as quince trees.

Catherine’s aim is to ensure that the house and grounds are an authentic piece of living history, but it is no museum. It is a home to her and her husband and young family. The grounds open for the last weekend in February under Scotland’s Gardens, primarily to show off the snowdrops in the woods. “There has been quite a lot of flooding this year, but we thought we would risk it,” says Catherine. Far from fighting battles with the elements, there is a sense at Traquair of a deal brokered over centuries, allowing nature its successes, and the Stuart family their own.

The maze is the most famous of these. It lies where the formal garden would have been. That comprised a parterre and pavilions designed by the Edinburgh architect James Smith, but by the 1900s it had disappeared. Catherine’s parents planted the maze in 1980 with 1,500 leylandii. A severe winter in 1981 killed off two-thirds of the young trees, so it was replanted with hardier beech. The maze took a long time to establish, says Catherine, with visiting children making their mark by crawling through the lines. Twenty years on, the maze is a pleasing mixture of green and copper. Half a mile to the centre, it is believed to be the second-largest maze in Scotland, after the one at Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen. The design comprises four sub-centres that must each be visited before reaching the middle, and every Easter Sunday the maze is the perfect place for an egg hunt.

Traquair, Scotland’s oldest inhabited house, is inextricably linked with dramatic times in Scotland’s past. Dating from 1107, it was first a hunting lodge for Scottish royalty. After the Reformation it became a refuge for Catholic priests, and the Stuarts supported Mary Queen of Scots and the Jacobite cause. Traquair’s strategic position in the Scottish Borders turned it into a fortress that was periodically seized by English troops. The Bear Gates, installed in 1738, next to the main entrance, take their name from the stone bears that flank them and support the family’s coat of arms.

You won’t be able to resist touching the thatched heather hut, built in 1834. Hazel branches form seats and a table, and walls are packed tight with heather. It shows how materials such as willow and hazel could be used today to create a gazebo with much more character than the mass-produced pine versions. It was so admired by Catherine’s great-uncle, Arthur Maxwell Stuart, a champion croquet player, that he had it moved to the croquet lawn, where it sits today. From the inside you can sit and look out through the open double arch, towards a children’s play area – which includes a willow play tunnel – and the house.

The line of lime trees along the avenue and the poplars next to the Well Pool convey a sense of what was in the past a formal garden. The extensive tree planting in the 18th and 19th centuries also included Douglas firs, ash, horse chestnut and beech. Some hulking specimens tower over the start of the woodland walk that runs from the house to the burn and passes the Tweed before returning to the maze.

But it is the yews that will have you catching your breath. Some of the yew trees may have stood in the face of more than 500 Scottish winters. They were thought to have been part of the Ettrick Forest and one group of four appear to form in a circle, designed by nature, about halfway along the woodland path. The bark is so old it’s smooth, but so pitted by the weather it looks like a frozen waterfall. Gnarled branches sweep overhead before swooping down to envelop visitors in a Harry Potter-like cavern.

A craft community has thrived at Traquair since Catherine’s mother, Flora, brought some of the outbuildings back into use in the Seventies. The workshops for self-employed craft workers can be visited when the house is open. A domestic brewery that had lain untouched since about 1800 was rediscovered by Catherine’s father, Peter, in 1965. He brought it back into production and brewing is now one of Traquair’s main businesses. Following the path back towards the house, the faint aroma of hops hints at the brewery. It looks out over the Well Pool, a large pond that was part of the Tweed before the river was re-routed away from the house in the 1600s. But nature finds its way back. Catherine adds: “When the river floods, it’s like it’s trying to come back to the Well Pool.”

After the 20th laird died, Catherine and her mother Flora continued to run Traquair and carried on improvements. Now, as the 21st Lady of Traquair, Catherine has brought the walled garden back into use, and it is the venue for Traquair’s annual fair in August. There you’ll find some great examples of espaliered fruit trees, with branches trained along the walls or against trellis. Last year, some of the land next to the walled garden was brought back to use as ten allotments for local people, and the next stage is plans for the land around the walled garden to include a community garden.

With a rerouted river, the neatness of the maze and arrow-straight lines of poplars and limes, a “wine glass lawn” that owes its name to the shape of the surrounding path, it could be easy to forget that nature writes the rules for most gardens. But with regular river floods, ancient yews, carpets of snowdrops and frosts that saw the mass destruction of leylandii, Traquair has never forgotten this.

So what do Traquair and its grounds mean to Catherine? “It’s the trees and the woodlands I’ve always loved. You can feel history in the house but you can feel it outside too. It’s a bit more kept than it was, but it’s been the most fantastic playground.” Luckily for visitors and the community, it’s one that can be shared.

• Traquair’s grounds are open next Saturday and Sunday, 25 and 26 February, 11am-4pm (www.traquair.co.uk)

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