The first western woman to meet the Dalai Lama, she hired a female designer, Taki Handa, to help her create Sha Raku En, “the place of pleasure and delight”. “In a sheltered foothold of a grassy range of hills, that stretch from sunrise to sunset, lies the gardens of my dreams,” wrote the intrepid Scottish traveller Ella Christie, who was inspired by her travels in the far east in 1907 to create a Japanese garden at her Cowden Castle home. It was later ruined but brought back to life in 2014. Open 28-31 July and 12-15 August, 11am-5pm, adult £10, child £5, under-5s free, The Japanese Garden at Cowden, ClackmannanshireĮxplorer Ella Christie created the garden at Cowden after travelling in the far east in 1907. The focal point of the garden, he hopes, will be a two-tier pavilion overlooking the scene, offering respite for people with cancer and their carers. Now Wiley is seeking crowdfunding to complete it, as a living memorial celebrating the vivid colour beloved by his painter wife. When Ros died of lung cancer in 2019, the project was still in its infancy – a deep pond remodelled into a cascade and stream, and the first experimental plantings made in beds of pure sand. It is intended as a tribute to his late wife, Ros. His latest mission is to devote part of this area to a South African bulb garden, a more authentic version of the South African meadow garden that first made his name in the 1990s at the nearby Garden House. But alongside the usual Mediterranean suspects, plants more accustomed to polite manor house borders – roses, clematis and regal waxy lilies – are forced into proximity with yuccas and palms and billowing grasses, to electrifying effect.īeyond the courtyard lie The Canyons, the artificial mountainside created over years by Wiley working his digger, where slopes clothed with birches and fragrant pines give way at this season to hummocks of swaying grasses and sheets of agapanthus, punctuated by red hot pokers and fiery crocosmias: it is a jaw-dropping sight. Emerging from the labyrinth of paths, there’s a fragrant Mediterranean courtyard, enclosed by a leafy pergola and softly painted adobe walls. Get lost among the narrow, twining paths, pause to rest in a bamboo arbour and be transported to a Chinese glade.
Gemcraft labyrinth walls series#
Over 18 frenetic years, Wiley has sculpted 1.2 hectares (three acres) of flat field on the rainy fringes of Dartmoor into a series of hills and valleys, canyons and pools, and redeployed the topsoil to create a fantastic variety of habitats ranging from the foothills of the Himalayas to the conifer forests of California, from mossy Cornish valleys to the sun-baked hillsides of Crete.
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