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How Dorothy and John Renton created Branklyn Garden Branklyn Garden is totally bound up with the names of Dorothy and John Renton. But for them there would be no garden. In 1922 they bought part of an orchard in the Barnhill district of Perth overlooking the River Tay and Moncrieffe Island. On this site they built a house and created a small garden alongside the Dundee Road and lived here for the rest of their lives. Within a few years they bought more land from Orchardbank Nursery and extended the garden to its present size of two acres. Indeed one of the old Carse of Gowrie varieties of pear trees from that nursery garden still flourishes to this day. Over the years John and Dorothy slowly created the wonderful garden which can be seen today. John Renton called himself the garden designer but insisted his wife Dorothy was the real gardener. And she left details of many of things she tried to do in the earlier days; but admitted many mistakes were made. As she honestly remarked: “We stepped into the pitfalls of many amateur gardeners by making all the orthodox things a garden should have. There is no truer saying in gardening than one learns by one’s mistakes.” Large stones were brought in by steam crane from the now defunct Kinnoull Hill Quarry to create a rock garden. But much of the detailed garden work was done by the Rentons themselves. Later James Aitken, the son of the owner of Orchardbank Nursery was apprenticed to the Rentons and helped with further development and rock work in the late 1940s. |
Over the years the garden grew and evolved. Influences on what they decided to do came from an interest in Sino-Himalayan flora (including the use of seed from expeditions by Ludlow and Sherriff), an enthusiasm for contemporary plant association coming perhaps from the ideas of Gertrude Jekyll and the concept of peat-wall gardening. In 1954 Dorothy was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal by the Royal Horticultural Society and in 1960 she received the Scottish Horticultural Medal from the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society. John Renton was a chartered land agent and among other appointments was Chairman of the Agricultural Executive Committee for East Scotland. He was made a CBE in1952. Dorothy Renton died in 1966 and John the following year. Branklyn House and Garden were bequeathed to the National Trust for Scotland in 1968. And the aim of the Trust ever since has been to keep the character of the garden as that of the one the Rentons created – a very personal private garden – but one open to all to enjoy. |
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The National Trust for Scotland is a charity (No. SC 007410) and depends for its support |