Garden restored to its former glory

Dec 23 2008 by Les Stewart, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

A HIGHLAND Perthshire garden has been restored to its original 1748 design.

Work at the Hercules Garden at Blair Castle has taken place over the past 10 years – and during that time its intriguing history has been revealed.

The garden is a walled enclosure of about nine acres and was developed by the 2nd Duke of Atholl in the mid-18th century.

Named after the life-sized statue of Hercules which overlooks it, the garden incorporates landscaped ponds and plantings, statues, urns, a Chinese bridge and a folly, fruit trees, vegetable beds and herbaceous borders.

Sarah Troughton, head trustee of Blair Castle, said her half brother, Iain, 10th Duke of Atholl, who died in 1996, initiated the work when he commissioned a survey of the managed landscape surrounding the castle which identified the Hercules Garden as an important Georgian landscape.