Publication Account
Date 1986
Event ID 1017198
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017198
When King James VII met opposition among the Scottish law lords to his catholicism, one of the Lords of Session that he had removed from the bench was Alexander Seton, Lord Pitrnedden. Seton retired from public life to pursue a major project that he had begun in 1675, the creation of a formal or 'great' garden. A date-stone recording the garden's foundation (Fundat 2 May 1675) can still be seen in the garden wall, the initials standing for Sir Alexander Seton and his wife, Dame Margaret Lauder. In creating a large formal garden, 145m square, with two main sections on different levels, Seton was following a well-established English pattern.
Seton's garden consisted of an upper and lower enclosure, divided by a wall with pavilions to north and south. The lower garden contained four large rectangular borders or parterres, ornamented with box hedging, which were viewed from terraces to north and south, and elegant garden furniture such as fountain and sundial. The restoration of the garden since 1952 was designed by Dr J S Richardson and others and carried out by the Trust's head gardener (the Beechgrove gardener), George Barron.
Three of the parterres follow designs shown on Gordon of Rothiemay's 1647 view of the Palace of Holyroodhouse, while the fourth, in the south-west, contains the arms of Sir Alexander Seton. The legends Sustento Sanguine Signa (With blood I bear the standard) and Merces Haec Certa Laborum (This sure reward of our labours), the bleeding heart in the centre of the arms and the 17th century soldier on the pavilion weather vanes all refer to the death of Seton's father, John, fighting on the royalist side against the Covenanters at the Bridge of Dee in Aberdeen in 1639.
In the middle of the lower garden is a fountain containing seven stones from the cross fountain in Linlithgow and three from Pitmeddeni they were possibly all cut by Robert Mylne for the restoration of Charles II. The pavilions are two-storeyed garden shelters with ogee roofs very similar to one at Bruce's Kinross House. In the upper garden is a herb garden, for cookery, perfume and medicine, and another fountain, Sir Alexander's own.
Another feature of Pitmedden is the Museum of Farming Life, with farmhouse and ancilliary buildings containing an important collection of 19th and early 20th century farming implements. The dark, cold little Bothy gives a good impression of the living conditions of the hired help a generation or so ago. Across the road is an excellent example of an estate limekiln and quarry pit of the early 19th century.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Grampian’, (1986).
