Craigieburn House, Moffat

I went to Moffat at least partly because I wanted to pay a visit to Andrew Wheatcroft, an ex-colleague from Publishing Studies at Stirling who I've had many an interesting chat with. He and his wife Janet, and their Nepalese Sherpa head gardener Dawa and his family, have made a wonderful garden at Craigieburn House (there's a story about this on www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/03/2007_52_fri.shtml). The garden is lovely, and I had a very nice afternoon drinking coffee and talking to Andrew and the dogs. The house itself is beautiful, too.



The garden, like all good gardens, has many lovely and very different areas: formal paving and a pond and clipped box bushes, a woodland area, cottage garden, even a Sherpa garden full of Himalayan plants with a long sloping path alongside a tumbling stream. There are also prayer flags in many places, which lends the garden not only extra colour but a kind of spiritual dimension.