Inverewe sounds like a fable dreamt up to fool the gullible: a remote, mythical paradise that is not quite real until you get there. And even then it seems miraculous.
How is it possible to grow sub-tropical plants on a peninsula warmed by the Gulf Stream but buffeted by Atlantic gales and salt spray, on a latitude closer to the Arctic Circle than St Petersberg? Did this garden really start off as a barren rocky peninsula in 1862, with no soil and most of its peat purloined by crofters? And are we really to believe that the creator of this garden, Osgood Hanbury Mackenzie, embarked on this quixotic adventure when he was only 20 years old?
Yet this is all true. Perhaps most remarkably, even at this young age, Mackenzie was equipped with the foresight to plant shelter belts and had the patience to do no more until he was nearly 40, than wait for them to grow.
It is unclear exactly what happened next: his memoirs provide only glimpses. We know he started planting by making little clearings under his canopy of pines and eking out pockets of peat between the rocks. When this method did not work for his wellingtonias he wrote: "I had to get an old man to bring me creels of rather better soil for them on his back from a distance."
That woodland is now home to 2,500 species and cultivars of trees, shrubs and plants from the Antipodes, China and the Americas, including original specimens introduced in the heyday of the great plant-hunters. It is beautifully cared for by the National Trust for Scotland, which was given Inverewe Garden 50 years ago by Mackenzie's daughter, Mairi Sawyer.
There are eucryphias, water lilies and hydrangeas flowering in the woodland now and some startling foliage. But late summer really belongs to the great curved walled garden Mackenzie made while waiting for his windbreaks and to the two new, smaller, south-facing gardens that adjoin it.
The terraced garden known as South Africa was devised by a former head gardener, Clive Murray, and is now cared for by Sue Ingster, who does all the propagating for Inverewe. It is built on a foundation of rocks with a top layer of 18in of very gritty soil for optimum drainage, to which no nutrients are added.
Sue has recreated the drifts and pointillist patterns of the wild flora of the Cape Province and the Drakensberg Mountains. Many of the plants were grown from seed she brought back and every year she orders supplies from South Africa's national botanical garden at Kirstenbosch.
Dieramas, crocosmias, tritonias, kniphofias, galtonias, watsonias and agapanthus ebb and flow down the slope to mingle with osteospermums, gazanias, diascias, ursinias, dimorphothecas, arctotis, phygelius and heliophila at the bottom. There is even a small bed of succulents and a proteus currently in flower, tucked away in a corner.
When the visitors have left the garden, she says, the smell of their deodorants and perfumes evaporates allowing the subtle honey and spice scents of South Africa to fill the air. This is a wonderful opportunity to see the light, airy elegance of South African flora, distilled into a relatively small space. And, says Sue, these plants would work equally well for anyone with an open, sunny and well-drained aspect.
Just below the South Africa terraces, Sue recently planted a new border near the shores of the loch. Backed by a group of mature olearias and Stipa gigantea, which rise behind it, the planting is designed to echo the sun, sky, sea and wind. "It's always windy here," she says, "and the idea is to be able to come down the hill and look through wavy, shimmering grasses to the glistening water."
There are orange flowers for the sun, and blue flowers and grasses for the sky and sea. The 20 varieties of carex and the blue Chilean grass Elymus magellanicus will make their impact in two to three years' time. For now, it is a carpet of orange California poppies, eryngiums and Catananache caerulea, with sunflowers and Verbena bonariensis providing the vertical accents.
Will Soos has looked after the walled garden for the past eight years. It is completely organic. He protects the carrots with environmental mesh, the brassicas with collars and the strawberries with pine needles to keep them clean and slug-free. The beds are mulched with the seaweed that the autumn gales throw on to the beach.
For the past couple of years he has been trying biodynamic gardening and has planted by the moon, using Nick Kollerstrom's Gardening and Planting by the Moon, 2003. Vegetables and flowers are divided into four groups, and you garden according to designated root, leaf, flower and fruit and seed days.
The book forbids you to sow, plant, hoe or harvest any group but the one assigned to that day. Will did not apply these principles this year and says that he has noticed a slight decrease in the vigour of the plants.
Will and Sue like the Trust's policy of giving them sole charge of their own patches. It enables them to become part of the rhythm and to observe, refine and hone the garden. No detail is too small to escape their eye. The miracle of Inverewe, it seems to me, is the combination of three careful owners and gardeners who look after the place as if it were their own.
- Inverewe Garden, Poolewe, Ross and Cromarty, is open all year (01445 781200). Boots and midge repellant are advisable for the woodland garden.