In a setting as muscular and magnificent as the Highlands of Scotland, making a garden that feels proportionate to that landscape, but with its own personality, is no mean feat. Yet on this project in the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, designer Tracy McQue has more than achieved this through sensitive dialogue and clever planting.
She has created a sequence of distinct yet beautifully connected spaces, including terraces, slopes, streamside gardens, damp prairie and a swimming pond and sauna, threaded with bold, characterful planting. It takes its cue from the hues and textures of the surrounding Highland flora, without being bound by it, as if the local palette has been remixed.
Tracy’s original brief from her clients was the 1.5-acre area immediately around the house, elevated above the rest of the site. Here, three larch-decked seating spots are tucked into the planting, each catching the sun at different times of day. Grasses and perennials come right up to the house with thoughtful planting vignettes positioned for the windows.
A garden in brief:
- What Hillside garden on the banks of Loch Lubnaig.
- Where Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park in the Scottish Highlands.
- Size Six acres.
- Soil Thin, stony, neutral.
- Climate Temperate oceanic, with mild summers and cool, wet, windy winters.
- Hardiness zone USDA 8b.
The owners quickly realised that, with the success of the upper terraces, Tracy’s vision was needed across the whole six acres of the sloping site, which drops seven metres from house to bottom. Now, after ten years of work, the garden encompasses a number of different character areas, each with its own identity, yet linked by gently repeating planting motifs.
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Standing on the upper terraces that wrap around the house, looking east down the slope, across the loch to the hillsides beyond, the garden appears effortless. The inclines are handled with apparent ease, but this was far from the case when Tracy began. Then, the garden felt domestic in scale, with a flat lawn perched on a tongue of land with steep, awkward drops either side.
A belt of Leyland cypress screened the loch-side cycle route but lent an oddly suburban air in such a rugged setting. Against the muscular backdrop of the National Park, the effect jarred. “The clients were hesitant about removing it,” Tracy says, “but I explained that as long as it remained, we would be reminded this was a man-made space.”
The planting design is rhythmic: at any one time in every space, three key species carry punchy interest through flower, foliage, texture or senescence
Now, with careful landforming of gentle bunds to mask the hi-vis vests of passing cyclists, and new planting of indigenous pines, alders and birches, the boundaries have dissolved, with the feathered edges giving a greater expansiveness to the garden.
Moving down the slope to the streamside garden, we navigate the changes in levels on what what Tracy calls the “plank” steps and paving – generously wide, linear pieces of simple concrete lengths. The movement feels completely natural; an adventurous, accidental meadering.
Tracy cites the influence of Chilean landscape architect Juan Grimm. “You arrive at a space – a room, a clearing, a lower terrace – without quite realising how you got there,” she says. “It’s like The Wizard of Oz: you’ve been swept up in a tornado and suddenly you’ve landed somewhere new, with no sense of the route you took.”
As the project expanded, Tracy admits that she took a bold approach. “Truthfully, there was no masterplan. I’m accustomed to creating them, but being handcuffed by one isn’t helpful in a space like this. The garden has to grow out of its relationship with the landscape, because that’s such a powerful presence.”
She worked closely with long-time contractor- collaborators Graeme Page, Stuart Ralph and Lewis Carey, and the property’s horticultural team, Sam Peczek and Billy Renwick, on a highly site-responsive approach. Walking the garden with her, it’s clear this has been a hugely enjoyable partnership, shaped by all involved, and grounded in a rigorous process of observing, testing and adjusting, hands-on and in situ.
The design was gently steered by a set of guiding principles: establishing key locations (views, seating areas, moments), then linking them with routes that explored how the clients might most enjoyably move through the space. These routes aren’t always direct, but instead weave through abundant planting with considered vignettes both intimate and expansive at different vantage points.
You arrive at a space – a room, a clearing, a lower terrace – without quite realising how you got there
Across the six acres, the sense of continuity comes from a restrained structural palette repeated across the site: pines, Euonymus, birches, amelanchiers and Salix act as the threads that stitch the different garden spaces together. The glaucous Pinus sylvestris ‘Watereri’, with its warm, orangey bark, picks up the tones of the planting, punctuated by mounds of Pinus mugo Pumilio Group, their evergreen contribution ever more important as we move into the autumn and winter months.
The planting design is rhythmic: at any one time in every space, three key species carry punchy interest through flower, foliage, texture or senescence. These vignettes of colour are threaded through a matrix of grasses, with punctuation plants and quieter fillers acting as a supporting cast.
Continuity is created by repeating certain elements across the site: like a Venn diagram, a limited number of species are found everywhere, while others are confined to a single area and a few are sprinkled into neighbouring zones as a subtle overlap.
Tracy drew her colour palettes from echoes of the landscape – burnished bronzes, a spectrum of greens, and purples and pinks – and the site’s agricultural past.
Featured plants that really shine as the seasons shift include Prunus serrula, Chionochloa rubra, Eurybia divaricata, Dryopteris erythrosora ‘Brilliance’, Carex testacea and Actaea simplex (Atropurpurea Group) ‘Brunette’. Hakonechloa macra, about to turn its own brackeney tone, and the upright seedheads of Digitalis ferruginea offset the greens of Helleborus foetidus, Carex divulsa, Blechnum spicant, Asplenium scolopendrium and Sesleria autumnalis. The garden is ablaze in autumn with Euonymus and Cercidiphyllum against a foil of evergreens.
Tracy describes the waves of colour across other seasons, from the warm, orange tones of Epimedium x warleyense ‘OrangekÖnigin’ and Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ in spring, to the pinks of Astrantia ‘Roma’ and Chaerophyllum hirsutum ‘Roseum’ in early summer, and cross- spectrum yellows of Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus, Kirengeshoma palmata and Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii later on.
Plants have been chosen for their suitability, but there is also space for experimentation and boundary-pushing. The results are all the more remarkable given the rigours of the environment – there are weeks when the sun never rises above the surrounding mountains, leaving the landscape almost monochromatic.
The soil here is rocky and neutral; the first planting was done with pickaxes, as spades were no use. The ground was so thin and stony that after two or three weeks of heavy rain – the site experiences 2m of rain a year – new plants were left perched above the surface, their roots exposed as the soil washed through.
The solution was to apply 100-150mm of 6-10mm angular chippings, whose format knits tightly together. “The gravel was just a substrate,” Tracy explains, “but it has ended up being the best decision. It allowed this to evolve into quite an experimental garden, and the success has been made entirely possible by the gravel, allowing the water to be held and still drain.”
Her approach is unsentimental. There’s no irrigation, no pampering, yet there have been few losses. What began as a practical fix has created a test bed where unexpected, effective combinations flourish and create something joyous. “A world of wonder,” as Tracy puts it.
USEFUL INFORMATION
Find out more about Tracy McQue’s work at mcquegardens.com
