‘If Arcadia possessed a country house, surely this would be it.’
Country Life, 2023
Broadwoodside is a garden in Lowland Scotland. The buildings of a former farm steading, dating from the seventeenth century to the present day, surround two sheltered courtyards. Around the outside of these, the garden extends into the surrounding farmland and woods on an ambitious scale, with many areas of planting, a pond, temple and other incidents in the landscape.
People very often talk of starting a new garden with a blank canvas. Broadwoodside was more like painting by numbers: the layout was determined by the footprint of the existing buildings and the many old walls that surround them. Planting the garden has been an exercise in ‘colouring-in’. But a garden is a process not a picture: the constant changes – at different times of day, from season to season – are recorded on Instagram:
- ‘The buildings, with their rugged patina, serve as a rustic backdrop to the garden “rooms” created by Robert Dalrymple. Areas of consummate wit and delight, they invert the erudition required to appreciate an 18th-century gentleman’s garden … Throughout the planting is bold and relaxed, with confident blocks of colour mingling with contrasting hard and soft plant forms.’
- Lothian, The Buildings of Scotland, 2024
- ‘Broadwoodside is a remarkable achievement. It is a country house that is both memorable and noteworthy, without ever falling into the trap of architectural pretension. That is perhaps because the humble origins of the steading still shine through the transformation to lend texture and interest to the buildings. No less remarkable is the way that the house graduates into the garden and the garden into the landscape. This is a house that feels not merely at home in its setting, but born from it. Finally, there is the delight of the place, enlivened with colour, inscriptions and beautiful things. If Arcadia possessed a country house, surely this would be it.’
- John Goodall, Country Life, 2023
- ‘A garden of singular style and wit … achieved with considerable aplomb and originality.’
- Tim Richardson, The Daily Telegraph, 2018
- ‘I was spellbound by the wit and elegance at Broadwoodside – a garden created in less than two decades by Robert and Anna Dalrymple from derelict yards surrounding an ancient agricultural steading in East Lothian.’
- David Wheeler, The Oldie, 2017
- ‘A garden that employs all the classical devices of symmetry, perspective and precise alignment but does so in such a witty fashion that the familiar becomes fresh and exciting.’
- Agnes Stevenson, Garden Design Journal, 2015
- ‘This is one of Scotland's finest contemporary private gardens, with excellent structure, imaginative use of objects, and some of the most eye-catching planting in Scotland … Cutting-edge garden design combined with imaginative planting; who could ask for more?’
- Kenneth Cox, Scotland for Gardeners, 2014
- ‘Broadwoodside proves that a well-designed garden can look beautiful all year.’
- Anna Pavord, The Independent, 2013
- ‘Fast becoming one of the most influential new gardens in Scotland.’
- Caroline Donald, The Sunday Times, 2012
- ‘A major new garden.’
- Noel Kingsbury, Gardens Illustrated., 2010