Aberdeenshire Glorious Gardens from Above

Britain has some of the finest gardens anywhere in the world.

For me it's about getting in amongst the wonderful plants

that flourish in this country

and sharing the passion of the people who tend them.

However, there's another way to enjoy a garden.

And that's to get up above it.

I love ballooning

because you get to see the world below in a whole new light.

From up here, you get a real sense

of how the garden sits in the landscape,

how the terrain and the climate have shaped it.

And I want YOU to share that experience with me.

I'm taking to the skies above the royal heart of Scotland,

where ancient history seems to ooze out of every rugged peak

and misty hollow.

The county's dramatic landscape has been shaped

and defined by glaciers and granite over millions of years.

Today I'm in Aberdeenshire,

the most easterly county of the Scottish mainland.

The city of Aberdeen sits

in the middle of the wind-lashed North Sea coast.

The terrain varies from soft, gentle mountains

to rugged, spectacular crags

and despite its easterly biting winds,

down there are some rather spectacular gardens.

It is an amazingly beautiful country, isn't it?

I'm visiting some gardens today,

which have a strong royal connection,

and which are magnificently colourful,

even as we head into autumn.

The first is recognised as an outstanding work of art

and there's plenty to do to keep it that way.

I don't know about you saying she'll split rather easily.

This brute isn't.

I reckon you picked that one on purpose.

The second is thought to be one of Britain's highest gardens,

where all my senses are overwhelmed.

I think of mist and moisture and that weird smell.

Absolutely super.

And we discover the secrets of the mysterious monuments

left behind by our ancient ancestors.

Heading inland from Aberdeen, you reach beautiful Royal Deeside,

where the Royal Family has been holidaying

since Queen Victoria fell in love with it in 1842.

And on a sunny slope overlooking the River Dee is Crathes Castle,

built in the 16th century and handed down

through 14 generations

of the ancient family of Burnett of Leys.

They created one of the finest and most important gardens in Scotland.

From up here, you get a real sense

of how the castle sits amongst its beautiful garden,

magnificent herbaceous borders, spectacular topiary,

a fountain garden and some really beautiful trees and shrubs

and I just can't wait to get down there.

400 years under the loving care of one family

has given this garden enormous historic significance.

The three and a half acres of walled garden next to the castle

started life as a kitchen garden,

designed to keep the castle household

supplied with fruit and vegetables.

But over the centuries,

it's evolved into something much more flamboyant and artistic.

Eight individual rooms, on two levels,

each have a different character and are divided by ancient yew hedges,

giving them structure amongst a glorious riot of colour.

And that's largely thanks to Sir James Burnett and his wife,

Lady Sybil, who were passionate about the estate.

Their brilliant imagination and plantsmanship

helped this garden burst into life

at the beginning of the last century.

Crathes, the sparkling jewel

in the horticultural crown of Scotland.

Sumptuous borders, beautiful trees and shrubs

and for me, a fantastic tribute to Scottish gardening history.

Lady Sybil was an early disciple

of renowned garden designer Gertrude Jekyll

and was well-known to her contemporaries

for her gardening skills.

She first planted the Upper Pool Garden

with an unlikely mix of flowers in reds, yellows and bronzes

and created a unique display.

Sir James, who had a distinguished career in the army,

was fascinated by trees and hedges,

and introduced rare and unusual species onto the estate.

The garden today is recognised as an outstanding example,

but gardens only stay that way with a lot of hard work.

And I'm meeting Toby Loveday, the head gardener,

who's at work in the Upper Pool Garden.

-Hi, Toby.

-Hi, Christine.

-Nice to meet you.

-How are you doing?

What are you doing here?

Lifting Dee lilies. We do this at the end of the season.

It helps their vigour, encourages them to flower next year.

But also, as you can see, there's an awful lot of dead through it

so we'll be taking a lot of that as we go.

-Would you like a hand?

-Yes, please. Yeah, sure.

And just the traditional up, out and then try and split them?

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

'It's satisfying work

'but Toby's energy wasn't always directed to digging.'

Well, originally, I wanted to be a musician,

I wanted to be a drummer in a band.

-A drummer?

-Yeah.

-SHE LAUGHS

-That is a contrast.

But my mother, very sensibly,

advised me that I needed something to fall back on,

so I went to college for three years and then I studied

at The National Trust for Scotland School of Gardening at Threave.

-Now, that's a nice place.

-Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was wonderful.

So I learnt a lot.

Whatever your training, every gardener has to learn

how to make the best of the environment they've been given.

And Toby, like Sir James and Lady Sybil before him,

have adapted to Crathes.

I don't know about you saying she'll split rather easily.

This brute isn't.

I reckon you picked that one on purpose.

-Can I borrow your fork?

-Yeah, absolutely. There you go.

That's sounding better.

-There you are. Thanks very much.

-Thank you.

What are the challenges you face here at Crathes?

I think climate is probably our biggest challenge.

Being in the north-east of Scotland,

we can have some pretty severe temperatures in the winter

-dipping down to about minus 15 at worst.

-Right.

But also we have very light free-draining soil.

-Yeah, you're telling me.

-Yeah, I know.

Very little clay in that, so in the summer months,

when it doesn't rain, the garden reacts really fast to that

and we actually have to really irrigate quickly to get on top of it.

But you haven't got soggy feet in the winter, mate.

Absolutely not. No, never.

-That is lovely.

-Yeah, it's wonderful.

And presumably, that restricts the range of plants you can grow.

To a certain extent, yeah.

Roses don't particularly like it. It's a very light soil for them.

So we struggle with roses, they're a bit more of a challenge.

Absolutely.

Herbaceous perennials we grow very, very well.

-It smells all right as well.

-Mm-hm.

Oh, yeah, I like that.

One of the biggest challenges

for a garden that's been established for a long time

is how to refresh and invigorate it.

And that's now Toby's job, as Sir James handed over the castle

and the estate to the National Trust for Scotland in 1951,

bequeathing a lifetime's work

and some important horticultural species.

This is a very established border, isn't it?

But what sort of age period would this have been planted in?

What's the history to this tree?

Well, this particular one is a magnolia

and this would date back to the time of Sir James and Lady Sybil Burnett,

in about the 1930s.

And how do you know that?

-We actually have Sir James Burnett's original planting book...

-Wow!

..that basically details every single plant

-they had in the garden at that time.

-Blimey!

So you've actually got a physical record

-of what has gone into this garden.

-Absolutely, yeah, at that time.

-It's very important.

-That's amazing.

-Yeah.

And how are you dealing

with the fact that this garden is actually getting quite old?

Many of the specimens within this garden

are of quite historical and horticultural significance,

so we really need to look closely at how we preserve the specimens

going forward for the future.

And do you have a specific type of propagation?

I mean, this can be propagated in different ways.

Sure, we'll probably start with some cuttings

and see what sort of success we get with that.

OK, let's have a collection of a bit of material.

'Taking cuttings is a cheap

'and an effective way of growing more plants.

'But make sure you use healthy parent plants

'and take cuttings at the right time of year.'

I think there's a bit more up there.

So I think it's...

-Got it?

-Yeah, I think so.

Magnolias are distinctive trees or shrubs

with large goblets or star-shaped flowers

that burst into bloom in spring and summer.

To produce the best growth and flowers,

they need full sun, and fertile, moist soil.

But, most of all, magnolias like to be sheltered,

so are often grown against a sunny wall.

Is this a garden for different seasons

or has it got a specific season?

No, because of these rooms that we have,

each one has a different character

and pretty much each time of year there's something different to see.

The way it's evolved, it's the sort of garden

you tend to wander and explore very randomly.

I don't think there are two similar routes down the garden

to follow, sort of thing.

But that kind of adds to that sense of adventure

that you have as you're exploring and discovering new rooms.

Absolutely, yeah.

I reckon there's a lot more material up there,

-but I think we are going to need a ladder, so...

-I think so.

-..let's go and get a ladder.

-Sure.

Toby's following in the footsteps of a head gardener at Crathes

who carried out Sir James and Lady Sybil's instructions

when they were gardening almost 100 years ago.

He was local legend Douglas MacDonald,

who joined the staff in 1937.

His son Doug was brought up in a cottage on the estate.

I was brought up in here.

And just had the run of the place. Climbing trees and being devilment.

I used to go fishing, doing a bit of poaching here and there.

I was just one of the warriors at Crathes.

While young Doug was up to mischief, his dad lived and breathed

the castle garden every waking moment.

Each plant was in its place and the borders were his pride and joy.

He really enjoyed himself here as well.

The gardens here was his second home.

I think all he could think of

was just gardening, gardening, gardening.

The amount of people, the thousands of people,

that he spoke to in a year was unreal.

All over the world people come in and about and congratulated him

on the estate, the garden and everything.

Douglas advised people all over the world on garden design,

made appearances on the BBC

and was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to gardening.

And young Doug often lent a helping hand.

When he was ten years old he remembers mowing the croquet lawn

as some very special visitors arrived.

That green was to be cut specifically dead straight.

And my father came up the steps

and, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop, stop, stop."

He says, "The Royal Family."

I go, "Uh?" He says, "Aye."

So just like that, down they came into the garden

and it was the Queen and Prince Philip

and a couple of the little ones.

Prince Philip, he comes straight over to me,

"What are you doing? What are you doing?"

And I says, "I'm cutting the green to a certain height."

I says, "For Sir James and Lady Burnett playing croquet."

"Can I have a shot?"

I says, "Yeah, no problem.

"But you have to keep it straight, mind."

Oh, well, by the time he was finished, it was like a snake.

He come back and he's...

-HE GRUNTS

-"I think I'll leave it for you," he says.

"I'm not very good." I says, "No, you're nae that."

Prince Philip wouldn't make a croquet green cutter. No way.

Although Doug was a dab hand with the mower,

as he grew up, his career took another path

and he went to work in the oil industry.

But his memories of childhood

and his love of this very special garden have never left him.

So, Dough, tell me what it was like to grow up on this estate.

Oh, it was absolutely fantastic, really.

You got the freedom of the garden, for a start.

And what about your time in the garden with your dad?

You know, did he show you how to garden at all?

No, not really. Cos I wasn't actually interested.

-But once I was older, I appreciated it better.

-Yeah.

Because I used to come in here and meditated, relaxed.

I walked about by myself and you got all the different smells

and perfumes of the plants and everything

and you stopped and you listened and all you could hear was the birds.

Yeah.

-Sometimes I used to think it was my own garden.

-Yeah.

-And I was so chuffed with that.

-Right.

Your dad would be very proud of that thought.

Yes, he would be now.

-And just a pity he isn't still with us.

-Yeah.

But I get the terrific sense

-that you are in love with this garden.

-Yeah, yes, yes.

-And that's very special.

-Cos I used to come in and see him.

-Yeah.

-Sometimes you just saw his head popping up and down

between the shrubs.

-And what was he like as a man?

-Very regimental.

-Right.

He liked everything to be done...

..to his standard.

If it wasn't done with the gardeners,

he'd come back and did it himself.

If he got a chance, he would have taken his bed down here

and he would have slept in the borders sometimes.

This was his pride and joy.

There's no doubt that Douglas Senior made his mark here at Crathes.

And, from up here, it's easy to see how the gardens,

and the castle rising up out of this beautiful landscape,

were meant to inspire awe.

But, long before Crathes was built,

other ancient communities were making their mark on the landscape

with monuments on hilltops all over North-East Scotland.

Adam Welfare, from the Royal Commission

on the Ancient Historical Monuments of Scotland, explains.

Here in Aberdeen, we are essentially in a glacier landscape

and these glaciers, as the melted,

would have left an enormous amount of debris behind

and it is that debris that people

over the last 10,000 years, in a sense,

have been gradually clearing away.

And in this particular instance,

stone has been cleared from the landscape

and reconstituted, if you like, into a stone circle.

For me, stone circles like this one at Tomnaverie

have an eerie, mystical quality

that fits so well with the Scottish landscape.

And there are more than 70 of them in this part of the country,

all with the same intriguing feature -

one huge stone lying on its side between two uprights.

They are actually designed to impress the visitor,

first and foremost.

You're meant to notice them in the landscape.

Archaeologists now believe they know the secret

behind these particular stone circles.

The heart of these stone circles,

that is usually the remains of a funeral pyre.

Subsequently to that, they started to build a very complex construction

which is completed by the stone circle.

It seems the stone circle is all that remains of a monument

marking a sacred site where a cremation had taken place.

And it's now thought that the two upright stones

symbolise a doorway into or out of the circle,

which is closed by the recumbent stone.

Perhaps to keep the spirits of the dead within the circle?

So these are sealed spots and it seems that the stone circle itself

is kind of a set of railings, if you like,

into which human beings are not really meant to enter.

That's what the people of the early Bronze Age

believed in 2500BC, 2300BC.

But the circle also had another deeply symbolic

and important meaning

for the society that went to so much trouble to construct them.

The essential characteristic of stone circles

is, of course, their circularity.

And we believe that it's symbolic of the cycle of life.

What is the cycle of life?

It is essentially that we are born, we grow older and then we die.

But it's a cycle and the people who built these stone circles

was quite aware that whatever might happen to the individual,

life went on.

I love the idea that these monuments

give us clues about how our ancestors used to live

and what they believed.

The access is essentially north-east south-west

on these stone circles, just the same as at Stonehenge.

And that access is closely related to the position of the sun

at both the summer solstice and the winter solstice.

And they saw in this a metaphor for life,

that essentially the longest day and the shortest night

is life at its most vital,

when you're young and fully developed

and in our world having children, etc, etc.

But at the winter solstice,

it's associated with the death of nature and the death of human beings.

Essentially, what they're encoding in these stone circles

is their understanding of life.

Our ancestors knew what they were doing

when they created these awe-inspiring monuments

in stark contrast with the lush landscape around them.

And we're still doing the same thing today.

Head north-west towards the Cairngorms from Tomnaverie

and you come to an estate that dominates its surroundings

in just as magical and mysterious a way.

It's called Tillypronie.

These gardens are full of spectacular heather beds,

magnificent herbaceous borders

and trees and forests that melt into the landscape.

Tillypronie means 'top of the hill' and it was exposed to

the very harshest weather conditions Scotland could throw at it,

until belts of trees were planted for shelter.

Nestled into the foothills of the Grampian Mountains,

Tillypronie has stunning views.

It sits at over 1,000 feet

and as such, it's claimed to be one of the highest gardens in Scotland,

having frost practically every month of the year.

And now it's beginning to turn its autumnal glory.

It's definitely the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness here,

as I make my way along the edge of the lake

with head gardener Kate Redpath.

It's the kind of place that makes you feel a bit poetic.

Oh, this is quite atmospheric, isn't it?

It's rather lovely, isn't it? With all this mist. It's terrific.

Kate has got something more practical in mind.

-Just watch your step on that stone.

-OK, thank you.

Gosh, so what are you doing down here?

-As you can see, we have got rather a lot of skunk cabbages.

-I'd say.

-And both species here.

-Yeah, both species -

the white one and the yellow one, Asian and American.

The Asian one is not a problem, but the American one spreads everywhere.

So we're just trying to reduce it a little bit.

-You are a glutton for punishment, lass.

-Yes, yeah.

Have you any idea how hard work it is digging this stuff up?

Oh, yes, yes.

I mean, this is enormous. Anyway, we'll give it a go.

Have you got a saw or something, we'll take that off.

-The easiest thing is just to...

-Lop off the top.

-..saw off the top.

And then we can have a look at what we've got.

-Go on, I don't mind.

-Get the spade in.

I mean, the big problem with this is that not only will it

spread by the roots, but it sometimes seeds itself, doesn't it?

-Yes. Yeah. Well, there is a seed pod here.

-Oh, right, let's have a look.

I mean, look at...

-SHE LAUGHS

-Just look at that.

And that is the problem we have. There are hundreds...

Well, thousands of seeds.

And I did read that they last for eight years in the soil, so...

You've got a problem, yeah.

And also with being in a watercourse,

we've got them flowing down here into our lake

and then out into the field

and into a watercourse outside the garden.

And the Cairngorms are out there, aren't they?

Yes, we we're right on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park.

The last thing you want is an invasive species taking over.

They'd love you for that.

They really, seriously would love you for that.

Anyway, you have a go.

Despite the unbelievably stubborn skunk cabbage,

I envy Kate her position here.

What is it that you love so much about this job?

I love a job where I'm outside all the time.

And I spend my day in one of the most beautiful gardens in Scotland.

-What makes it so special to you?

-I think it is probably the setting.

We are right high up on a hill.

When it is not misty like this, the view is phenomenal.

You are looking right over Royal Deeside.

You can see up into the Cairngorms.

It is absolutely stunning.

It's this atmosphere as well.

You see, I think... Northern Scotland, I think of,

you know, mist and moisture and that weird smell,

you know, first thing in the morning.

I think it is the clean air.

There is no traffic pollution at all.

That's right, you can smell the vegetation. It's absolutely super.

-So let's squidge, squidge.

-Going to carry on with this?

Yeah, yeah, let's see what we can do.

What are the challenges you face in this sort of environment?

The main challenge we have here is the weather, to be honest.

You know, we can get four months of snow lying.

-Maybe start snowing end of November.

-Right.

-Through to April sometimes.

So, really the crux of the gardening year, when you should be tidying...

-Yeah.

-..and regeneration and getting the garden ready for the spring.

You've got bulbs as well, don't you? I think.

That's a broken bit, that's not good.

-And that's the danger. You see?

-Yeah.

-There we go.

-Fantastic example of what we shouldn't be doing.

Cos that would normally have... And this end there.

You'd normally have the base plate,

so where the plant grows from, and that would have lots of bulbs on.

-And that's how it generates again.

-So that is two half ones.

-Yeah.

God, it stinks. Gaw!

-Do you want me to have a go from this side?

-Yeah.

Just watch your fingers.

You are coming out!

-There you are.

-Ah-ha, there's another bit.

-That's it, come on.

Woohoo!

See?

That was a struggle!

But the mist is clearing and I need to wipe the muck off my hands

because I'm going to meet the owner of Tillypronie,

The Right Honourable Philip Astor.

Philip, what's the history of this estate?

Well, it all dates back, really, to the time of Queen Victoria.

The house was built in 1867 by the son of Queen Victoria's physician.

He was Sir James Clark, and his son, John Clark, built it.

And Queen Victoria, in fact, came over and laid the foundation stone.

I think it was the first time she'd ever done that.

So that was rather special.

And she used to come over with John Brown,

famously her gillie and friend and counsellor, I suppose.

And the story goes that the Clark family weren't comfortable

with him eating in the house and he thought that he was perhaps

too superior to eat with the staff, so they built as little hut for him

-outside, where he would eat in sumptuary state.

-On his own?

-Well, that is what I understand.

-Right.

Philip's parents bought Tillypronie in 1951 with the garden

terraces already laid out.

In the early days, Philip had very little interest in the garden,

although he was present when the Queen planted a tree here in 1960.

Years later, he took over the estate from his parents,

Lord and Lady Astor.

Well, I inherited when I was very young, I was only 24,

my mother was still alive then and she was very much...

had been very much involved.

And it was really ready-made, so I didn't really need to do very much.

But as time went on, I saw that we had got some plans in the house

of various initiatives that had been considered, for example, a rockery.

And the rockery is now very much good

in springtime in particular with alpines.

And then I also did a Golden Jubilee garden to mark the Queen's Jubilee.

And she graciously came over and planted a dawyck.

Her little dog at the time, which was potentially embarrassing because

as we were walking to the place where the tree was going to be planted,

he did a poo in front of us and then did a wee on the tree.

Now there is a horticulturalist's dog -

waters it in and then fertilises it.

I love that.

Well, and I think she understood, too.

It seems Her Majesty forgave the breach of protocol,

and now Philip and his wife, Justine,

are making their mark on the garden.

My wife is particularly keen to develop the planting in various

places, so for example, some of the beds looking very fulsome

at this time of year can look rather bare and quiet in springtime.

-So, her aim is to extend the seasonality.

-Exactly.

Do you know, I get the real sense that it is in very safe hands.

-Would you like to show me a little bit more?

-Absolutely.

Tillypronie's heather beds make a fabulous feature in the front

of the house, helping the garden to blend with the surrounding hills.

The glorious purple colours of Scottish heather, or ling,

spread freely over five million acres

of Scotland's hills and moorlands.

It's a hardy plant which likes an acid soil, enjoying sunny

slopes and lots of water - perfect for the Scottish climate.

Scottish heather is an important food source for sheep

and some deer when snow covers the ground in winter.

Overlooked by the heather-clad hills of the Cairngorms and just

down the road from Tillypronie, is the village of Tarland.

With countryside all around,

it's hard to imagine that not everyone living here has a garden.

But the community has come up with a brilliant solution.

Lizzie Shepherd explains.

Tarland Community Garden came about when a group of local

volunteers came together to try and encourage more

people in the area to grow fruit and vegetables more successfully.

We found out there were a whole series of barriers that were

stopping people from growing fruit and veg locally,

such as health problems, they didn't know how to grow fruit and veg

and the climate can be really challenging up here

and they didn't have the facilities to do it.

With the help of funds from the Scottish government

and Aberdeenshire Council,

the group set up a 90-foot polytunnel over raised flower

and vegetable beds, so that everyone could have a go at being a gardener.

We've got about 40 households who are members

of Tarland Community Garden,

and they have an individual bed each, both inside and outside the tunnel.

The local primary school and the play group have beds.

And so the children are able to come in and use the facilities as well.

And it's not just the youngsters who are learning new skills.

Ex-fisherman and oil-rigger, Frank, loves spending time at the garden.

I've been coming here for a year and a half now.

I've met a lot of new friends in the Community Garden, you know?

It's been really good, like.

I've always been interested in gardening,

even when I was on the sea, you know.

And I used to read a lot of gardening books, and I says,

"Well, when I come ashore, I'll take up a wee bit of gardening,

"just to pass the time," you know what I mean?

I'd like to grow sort of exotic stuff,

again if the weather...if we get a good summer, you know?

I mean, aubergines, that's the first time I've ever grown them.

In this part of Scotland,

if you mention aubergines, they say, "What's that, what's that?"

Yeah?

And since he's discovered his green fingers, there's no stopping him!

I was actually thinking - lemon cucumbers.

But they're nae long, you see?

They're like the size of a...like the size of a beetroot.

You know?

And I reckon they've got a lovely lemony flavour.

Apart from your normal cucumber, you know?

So I'd like to try... I'll probably try them next year, I would think.

Annie's a social scientist,

and she couldn't wait to get involved with the project.

I started in the garden when I first moved to Tarland,

which was just over two years ago, and it was just starting to get built

and I was very keen to be a member cos

I don't have any growing space at my house.

My favourite thing about coming here is probably meeting everybody

that's around, it's always very sociable,

and obviously, the produce,

because you can come here and find something tasty for your tea,

maybe do a bit of bartering with other people that are around.

As everyone settles down for some soup,

made of course from home-grown produce, I'm reminded

of the sense of sharing and belonging

that a simple garden can encourage.

The Cairngorm mountains are known for their beauty and their wildlife,

and for skiing in the winter.

But it's the legacy of the ice age that formed the rugged

and breathtaking landscape that we know today,

and which has defined the history of Aberdeenshire.

The mountains themselves are made of granite.

As the centuries passed, granite was used locally.

But large-scale extraction of granite really began as commerce

and industry expanded in the 18th century.

As its fame spread, the demand for granite grew,

forming the basis for the prosperity of the area.

Jenny Brown is from Aberdeen Museum.

The granite industry is a huge part of who we are here in Aberdeen.

We've used our local stone, which we are very rich in,

for our monuments and our homes and our buildings for centuries.

And particularly from the 18th century onwards,

we began to build the city out of granite.

So it's really all around us.

So, we're here in Marshall College, which is perhaps one

of the most extravagant examples of the use of granite,

built when the industry really was at its peak.

And the skill here, it could not really be replicated today.

So it's a huge part of our heritage and our culture.

There was a large number of quarries in and around Aberdeen,

producing granite of different colours and textures,

which led to its nickname of the Granite City.

In the 19th century, of course, and the coming of steam power,

things really got going. So you start seeing a lot more

building in the city using the stone but also exporting.

This is an age where we have huge engineering projects being

undertaken all over the UK, in fact all over the world.

And granite was perfect for that kind of building cos it's strong

and it's durable.

By the late Victorian period, Aberdeen workers had

honed their granite-working skills so much that they were able to carve

fine details into the architecture of buildings and monuments.

The craftsmen here were

so well respected for their skill in working what is quite

a difficult stone that they were actually, as individuals,

travelling overseas and to other parts of the UK to apply their trade.

The popularity of granite reached its peak in the years leading

up to the First World War.

But after that, the industry began to decline.

With the discovery of oil in the North Sea,

obviously things changed here a lot.

And one of those was that the big companies were coming in

and offering really high salaries.

And the native industries couldn't really compete with that,

and that really contributed to the final decline.

And the industry now is much reduced, but they still very much pride

themselves on those skills in working the local stone.

And we also work very hard to preserve our heritage

here in the city.

The beautiful architecture of Aberdeen,

and buildings throughout the region,

means granite will always be characteristic of this place.

Crathes Castle itself, built of granite way back in the 16th

century, shows how much the geology of the area has shaped its history.

And everything I've seen in North-East Scotland shows how

people here have been inspired to create things from nature,

in harmony with the beautiful and dramatic scenery around them.

It's wonderful to walk around the garden here at Crathes

and think about all the members of the Burnett family

and their staff who've loved it and added to it over time.

Every gardener has left a bit of themselves in the design or the

planting of the estate, and for some people it's been their life's work.

And it was the woods in particular that head gardener's son, Doug,

loved so much when he was a boy.

Climbing trees and helping the foresters have given him

a lifetime of cherished memories.

I want to leave my own contribution here that will serve

as a memorial to a very special gardener.

If you was to leave something that celebrated your dad's

life in the garden, what would it be?

Well, I've got a photograph of him when he was a retiring,

doing the gardening with a hoe in his hand,

-standing at attention...

-Yeah.

..ready to get going. I think something like that...

-Something practical.

-..would be really nice to see.

For a gardener, there's something very special about hoeing.

It connects the man, or the woman, with the soil.

And you spend a lot of time thinking, dreaming, hoeing.

-I think there's a lot of dreaming.

-Yeah. Let's have a walk.

I'm sure I know a group of local craftsmen who can put

a practical spin to this dreaming.

Grampian Woodturners were established 20 years ago, and

their 50 members make all kinds of wooden objects from local forests.

Bill Diack and the group hold regular demonstrations at Crathes.

I served my apprenticeship at a joiner.

That's the only thing I've ever wanted to do was work with timber.

The members make all sorts of wooden objects,

from spheres, bowls,

platters, spurtles - a Scottish stirring stick -

what you make is limited by your own imagination.

Early woodturners used lathes operated by primitive mechanisms,

such as straps or poles, but they were very effective and many believe

they were the first form of machines.

Later, a whole industry grew up around producing just

the legs of chairs and these craftsmen,

known as bodgers, would often buy a piece of woodland

and set up camp there.

These days, motorised lathes make the process of woodturning

much quicker.

I prefer wood turning to carving

because I can achieve a finished object fairly quickly.

Wood turning...

Carving is quite a slow and laborious process,

and I don't have patience for it.

And you can take off quite heavy...

Not too bad. Could've been better.

HE LAUGHS

Today, the gardeners at Crathes have donated some oak to

Grampian Woodturners so they can make a very special one-off piece.

This is...

a piece of the oak that we were

given by the gardener for making the handle for a hoe.

Fellow woodturner Alastair McKenzie inspects the finished article.

He's done a very good job.

Yes, he's a very talented turner as well.

So, yes, just need to get the plaque mounted on here

and that'll be it, ready for mounting.

Head gardener Douglas MacDonald was such a fixture here at Crathes,

it seems only right to commemorate him.

So I've gathered together National Trust for Scotland staff, gardeners,

and woodturners to help me celebrate a place that has brought joy

and inspiration to thousands of visitors,

but also great happiness to families with a deeply personal connection.

Sir James and Lady Sybil were the last in a long family line

who poured their hearts into this beautiful garden,

and who handed it over to the Trust

knowing that it would be loved and cared for, for generations to come.

Doug, your father was here for 44 years

and he passed that challenge on to other gardeners.

And Toby is now here to maintain that challenge.

And in celebrating that, I thought it would be really nice to

just leave a little something

that connects gardeners with the land.

And I'm hoping that this may speak to you in a very special way.

While his dad's legacy lives on, for Doug,

it's his memories of playing in the garden

and parkland as a boy that mean everything in the world to him.

It's heaven.

It feels like home every time I come back here.

Especially when I come up here.

You just start to...bottle up.

And you fill up.

It's great. It's memories, memories, memories.

It's fantastic.

I wish I could live it all over again. I do.

What a wonderful reminder of the powerful impact a garden can

have on people's lives, as I've been lucky enough to see at all

the fabulous places I've visited today.

Now, that's got to be worth a toast.

-To Scottish gardens!

-ALL: To Scottish gardens. Cheers.