For those people who still look on the northernmost
counties of the British Isles as forming part of the arctic regions,
a glance at the papers pertaining to Major Gilchrist’s gardens at
Ospisdale in Sutherland would come as a surprise. A garden of sorts
must have existed there for many years before the Major took it
over, but according to bills etc., that we have, his embellishment
of it started around 1810 and continued until his death in 1840.
While the diet of the ordinary folk in this part of the country
included only such vegetables as potatoes, turnips, onions and
possibly carrots, a consignment of seeds for Ospisdale, ordered from
Dickson and Co., of Edinburgh in March 1813, included cabbage,
asparagus, broccoli, lettuce, radishes, cauliflower, celery and
‘pease and spinnage’, with in some cases several varieties of each
vegetable. The bill for this lot came to £39.12.11d, a huge amount
for that time, but the order also included some unspecified flower
seeds, 3,000 larch seedlings, various other young trees and a
hedging knife. All was despatched by sea and the charges for
carriage and packing amounted to 12/-d. Though this consignment came
from Edinburgh, most of the garden requirements came from two
Inverness firms – Donald and John Fraser and Co., and Dickson and
Gibbs. The latter also had a nursery at Tain in the care of one
James Munro. This meant that orders could be sent by ferry across
the Dornoch Firth, and thence by carriers cart to Ospisdale, with
comparative ease. Mr. Gibbs was assiduous in writing to the Major to
solicit or acknowledge orders – one dated, surprisingly enough, New
Year’s Day 1820, reads ‘Last harvest having been unusually fine we
are supplied with a choice assortment of seeds – their quality we
can recommend and the prices are uncommonly low. We always have on
hand a select assortment of garden tools, and our nurseries are as
usual stocked with every description of forest and fruit trees
suited to the climate of Scotland...’ If he wrote at such length to
all his customers, Mr. Gibbs must indeed have been a busy man. On
occasion he wrote to say that he would wait upon the Major at
Ospisdale, but further letters say that he was sorry to find that
the Major had been obliged to be away from home at the time of the
visit, but whether Mr. Gibbs met his esteemed customer or not, the
Major was always assured of the best of attention at all times etc.
Since there was a considerable amount of land to be forested around
Ospisdale, and the Major was also purchasing on behalf of the
Marquis of Stafford and Lord Ashburton of Rosehall, the orders were
large, and small wonder that he deserved, and got, this attention.
As a tailpiece to some of the letters, Mr. Gibbs dares to express a
discreet hope that the good Major will soon see his way to settling
last year’s account .. an account rendered in December 1814 was for
goods supplied early in 1813 – a long time, by our standards, to
keep a tradesman waiting for his money.
Dickson and Gibbs supplied young trees and shrubs,
and there was an order placed with them towards the end of 1813 for
100,000 2 year-old Scots Firs for the sum of £5 Their list of shrubs
issued in 1814 was impressive, including as it did 11 kinds of
clematis, 10 of honeysuckle, several magnolias and 100 varieties of
rose, and most interesting of all to the writer is Kalmia Latifolia,
one of the prettiest shrubs imaginable which grows wild over much of
the United States and is known as Mountain Laurel or the Calico
Bush, but which now seems to be almost unheard of in northern
Britain.
Frasers (of Bridge Street, Inverness) also issued a
price list from time to time, and there is a copy of it dated 1815..
It makes unexpected reading, listing no fewer than 65 varieties of
apple (of which only 4 were ‘ornamental’, presumably crab-apples)
with such curious names as Summer Strawberry, Dridge’s Early,
Norfolk Beefin and Cat’s Head. Fifty kinds of gooseberry are listed,
varieties never heard of today such as Hulm’s Dumplin, Mr. Tup and
Black Virgin – one wonders what they were like? Of plumbs (sic)
there were 24 kinds, 37 of cherries, and 8 of apricots with names
like Early Masculine and Roman. These together with the peaches and
nectarines were expensive, from 2/6d to 5/- each, whereas the apple
trees were but 1/- each, and named gooseberries a mere 4d (Dutch
flower roots were also advertised – presumably tulip and other
bulbs.) A long list of trees included maples at 5/- per 100 and
walnuts at 30/- per 100. Ospisdale with its south facing walled
garden seemed to have been an excellent place in which to grow fruit
of all kinds; melons and cucumbers were also grown, though doubtless
under glass. The invoices from both Dickson and Gibbs, and Frasers
were written in the most beautiful copperplate handwriting on heavy
quality paper, the former decorated with a small engraving of a
bread fruit tree, while those of Frasers had a similar size picture
of a rose bush in a pot at the top of each page. Flowers generally
do not appear to have been ordered so frequently and not in such
quantities as the other things for the garden, but in 1847 Dicksons
were asked to supply 10/- worth of’ unspecified flower seeds,
together with German asters, sweet peas, four standard rose trees
and two white moss rose bushes ‘if hardy enough to stand the
climate’. There is also mention of bachelor’s buttons, short stemmed
aquilegia in purple or pink, agrostemma (lychnis), feverfew,
southernwood (said to be good for whitening the teeth) delphiniums,
sunflowers, mignonette, lupins, ten-week stock, convolvulus (to us a
mere weed) love-lies-bleeding and Chrysanthemums, also a ‘Paper
white primrose which makes a cushion of white in the Spring’, so the
place must indeed have been colourful. Much earlier in 1818, there
is a record that an order was placed with Hugh Rose of Tarlogie for
21,000 boxwood (presumably seedlings at 5/- per 1,000 so one can
imagine that the flower beds were surrounded by little box hedges.
And what of the gardeners that tended these plants? Their names are
now forgotten, but we read that at the beginning of the 19th century
the men at Ospisdale were paid about £10 annually for their work,
while their wives and children helping with the weeding or at
harvest time would have received very much less. There is a record,
dated 1812, of an unnamed gardener’s wife and her daughter Catherine
employed carrying sacks of barley into the Mill and getting paid at
the rate of½ d per sack, though we are not told how far the sacks
had to be carried. The doyen of all Sutherland gardeners must surely
be old William Munro who cared for the garden at Rosehall for 70
years, and died in 1820 aged 102. He came there in 1740 to work for
the Baillie family, and Major General Baillie eventually left him a
pension of £5 per annum in his will. When the estate was sold to
Lord Ashburton in 1805, Munro was taken on with the estate and Lord
Ashburton put him into one of the new lodges that he had had built,
and from time to time ordered that a bottle of port be sent to the
old man who, in his 90s was becoming frail. When Munro died, Lord
Ashburton ordered a tombstone for him from London as a surprise for
his family, and this stone may still be seen, worn but decipherable,
in the little graveyard near the banks of the Cassley.
Today the garden of Ospisdale, after a succession of owners,
still remains beautiful and productive, even though somewhat reduced
in area and made more labour-saving, adapting to the conditions
which prevail almost 200 years after Major Gilchrist first strode
through it, full of ideas for it’s development and beautification.