Our secret garden: Duo tend botanical wonder in splendid isolation

Volunteer Rory Stewart, on arched bridge, works alone in the beautiful, seven-acre Japanese Garden at Cowden near Dollar which normally attracts 22,000 visitors a year

It is one of Scotland’s most spectacular botanical treasures, once described as the best of its kind in the western world.

But since lockdown, the Japanese Garden at Cowden, Clackmannanshire, has been tended by just one woman and her nephew.

The historic garden is one of only a few surviving sites of its kind in the UK.

Created in 1908 for the pioneering explorer Ella Christie, the garden is run by a charitable trust, the Japanese Garden at Cowden Castle SCIO, chaired by her great-great niece Sara Stewart.

Following years of restoration involving teams of experts from Japan, the garden fully reopened to the public last year, when it attracted 22,000 visitors.

The trust was hoping for another bumper year when their plans were thrown into turmoil.

With no income from visitors and all paid staff on furlough, the challenge of maintaining the garden fell to Sara. Together with her 19-year-old nephew Rory, she hopes to prevent the garden becoming overgrown until it can reopen after the coronavirus crisis and the professionals can get back to work.

Sara said: “Rory and I are amateurs. Thankfully the professionals left us very precise instructions.

“We’ve spent time watering, which is a relatively easy, but we’ve also edged, weeded, fed and mulched about 150 shrub circles.” Rory, studying land management at Newcastle University, volunteered to help his aunt after returning to his family home during lockdown.

Sara admitted she was grateful, adding: “I’m the chairperson of the charity so it’s my duty, but I also consider it a real privilege.

“I’m proud of Rory as he’s 19 – he could be sitting in front of the TV with a beer, but I think he also sees this as a privilege. He just finds another challenge and gets on with it.” Sara’s great great aunt Ella broke with traditional ideas about the role of women to mount ambitious solo expeditions around the globe.

Rory and Sara Stewart hard at work edging, weeding, feeding and mulching one of the garden’s 150 shrub circles

She was inspired by the gardens of Kyoto and Tokyo to create her own Japanese garden in the grounds of her home at Cowden Castle, near Dollar. Cowden’s Japanese name Shah-raku-en means “a place of pleasure and delight”. Sara added: “This place is known for its extraordinary tranquility.

“I feel that the sooner we can open it, the better for the benefit of everybody. But they won’t benefit if it looks like a long hairdo.”