page_title: Gardening in Scotland
section_title: Twentieth century to the present
hierarchical_section_title: Gardening in Scotland / Twentieth century to the present
caption_attribution_description: English: "Willowtwist" Aluminium sculpture by Charles Jencks and his wife Maggie Keswick. Garden of Cosmic Speculation. Dumfries; a single long sheet of aluminium - cut and split twice
context_page_description: Gardening in Scotland, the design of planned spaces set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature began in the Middle Ages.
  Gardens, or yards, around medieval abbeys, castles and houses were formal and in the European tradition of herb garden, kitchen garden and orchard. The first Renaissance style gardens in Scotland were built for the Stewart dynasty at their royal palaces. Members of the nobility and gentry followed suit. From the late sixteenth century, the landscaping of many estate houses was influenced by Italian Renaissance gardens. From this period there are many examples of formal gardens created for nobles, gentry and lairds. The legacy of the Auld Alliance and the beginnings of the grand tour meant that French styles were particularly important in Scotland, although adapted for the Scottish climate. In the late seventeenth century William Bruce put Scotland at the forefront of European garden design.
  In the eighteenth century there was a reaction against the "absolutism" and "popery" of the French court and a retreat from the expense of maintaining large formal gardens.
context_section_description: Scottish plant collectors continued to be highly active in the early twentieth century. George Forest (1873–1932) undertook seven expeditions to Western China between 1904 and 1932, bringing back over 30,000 botanical specimens. Other major figures in the field included Euan Cox (1893–1977) and George Sheriff (1898–1967).
  Some major planned gardens were created in the twentieth century. Ian Hamilton Finlay's (1925–2006) garden of Little Sparta opened in 1960, combining landscape, sculpture and concrete poetry. The American-born Charles Jencks (b. 1939) has developed a number of landscape and sculpture gardens in Scotland, including the post-modern Garden of Cosmic Speculation near Dumfrieshire, begun in 1988, which incorporates elements of the history of the cosmos into traditional designs.
  Both The National Trust for Scotland and Scotland's Gardens were founded in 1931. The National Trust owns and maintains many major gardens, particularly those associated with palaces, castles and estate houses. The Scotland's Gardens scheme opens gardens not normally seen by the public, using the proceeds to fund charities.
  Gardening began to be a major pursuit of the working and middle classes in the twentieth century. In the inter-war period there was a concerted attempt to encourage working-class men to abandon their traditional leisure activities in favour of activity in the garden, which was often given over to vegetable growing. Gardens were a deliberate part of the council housing schemes of the period, although the high density housing used in Scotland meant that there was less provision on the garden-suburb model than in England. Allotments were seen as one solution and by 1939 there were over 20,000 in Scotland. It was among the middle classes that domestic gardening took off in this period, fuelled by horticultural shows, open gardens, items in newspapers and increasing use of landscape features.
  In the post-war period there were increasing numbers of people who possessed gardens. This resulted in increased information on gardening on radio and TV. In 1978 the BBC began to broadcast The Beechgrove Garden, filmed in Scotland and aimed at the owners of suburban semi-detached houses. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw a huge increase in do-it-yourself gardening books and magazines.
caption: Charles Jencks's Garden of Cosmic Speculation
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