Ireland does not have a monopoly on the 40 shades of green. Highland
Perthshire in June and July is just as verdant, with gradations of green
that include the fresh shoots of emerging bracken and the lush emerald of
new larch needles.
Driving up the steep track to visit Kevin and Jayne Ramage in their 1790 cruck
house, the surrounding hills are festooned with hawthorn blossom and the
arching golden fronds of wild broom.
It is among these that the couple have created an innovative rock garden and,
more recently, have installed a display of rock art works by Lotte Glob, the
renowned sculptor.
The hill top reveals a low stone house, its thatched roof weighed down by
large stones joined by wires and, further on through the settlement (or
ferme toun, which would have been home to several farming families and some
labourers), tin replaces thatch.
Arriving at the end house, there is a grass roof on top of a glass-walled
lobby linking the old thatched stone building to a dramatic modern
extension. There is a fine juxtaposition between the neat thatched stone
house (the reeds came from the banks of the Tay at Errol and replaced a
previous tin incarnation) and the modern glass and rendered extension.
Kevin likes the contrast and says that, from the hillside above, a birds-eye
view of the grass disguises the linking building, so that they look like two
separate ones.
The Ramages had been coming up to the Aberfeldy area for years while living in
London, where Kevin had started the Owl bookshop in Kentish Town in 1994,
followed by The Grove in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, in 2002.
In 2004 the couple decided to move permanently to their cruck house, near to
the working watermill that they had bought in Aberfeldy.
In an award-winning conversion that retained the original workings and
grinding stones, The Watermill has become their third bookshop venture as
well as a busy exhibition and events venue and a coffee shop.
Anybody who has gardened in this area will be aware of the stones, rocks and
boulders that are thrown up when digging.
In the past, all the materials you would need for a house were free — the
stones for the walls, the heather or reeds for the roof — but the tricky bit
was the cruck.
Not only did you have to ask permission to cut a sufficient size of the scarce
timber for this essential prop for your roof, but often the ownership would
be retained by the landlord, giving them the “crucial” power if you wanted
to “up sticks” and move house.
When asked why they chose the Highlands for their home, Kevin points out that
they still have more than 240 Munros to climb. Mountains and rock-climbing
hold a fascination for the pair that they could only dream about while
living in a flat in London.
“I enjoy a challenge,” says Kevin. “When you are out walking, negotiating a
tricky, rocky, exposed ridge, your mind is entirely focused on that — which
is wonderful for relegating all the day-to-day stuff that can crowd creative
thought out of your mind.”
It was while extending the cruck house that stones became a preoccupation,
however. The Ramages were still living in London when the bulldozers were
working on the foundations for the extension, so Jayne told them that “if
there are a few rocks around don’t let them get taken away as I want to make
a rock feature”.
Soon aware that they could have built a mountain, they stopped counting at
120.
Boulders, some the size of armchairs and sofas, litter the landscape as a
result of the glaciers that cut these valleys in the rock tens of thousands
of years ago. As the glaciers slowly sliced through the countryside, they
collected boulders in their path. Then, as the ice melted, they were
deposited where they fell.
Initially, the Ramages built a walled enclosure for a vegetable garden. Here
the neat raised beds, edged with wooden planks made by a local joiner, are
crammed with all manner of vegetables jostling for attention.
Everything is grown organically from seed in the rich home-made compost. A
large immovable boulder in the centre rises like an iceberg — some of the
ones moved earlier required two diggers to shift.
The garden is similar to the stone vegetable plots, or planticrues, found on
the Northern Isles, which protect the plants from both animals and wind.
Last week, a glut of early lettuce was heading for the kitchen at The
Watermill cafe — Jayne hopes to provide the kitchen with many ingredients.
A large boulder wall to the east makes a dramatic boundary for another
enclosure. It is decorated with smaller stones that balance on the boulders,
forming natural sculptures while defying the wind to blow them over. This
room with a view has yet to be allocated a use, but chickens are a
possibility.
This hillside garden is not a gardener’s garden, but more of a natural link
between the house and the hillside providing the main view sweeping
northwards.
The garden reflects the hill, so there is a constant battle with invading
bracken and broom. There are no lawns, paths are mown through the long grass
and, instead of flower beds, there are wild flowers growing through the
grass.
Being north-facing, the light is soft, giving a tranquil feel as the eye is
drawn through the different shades of green.
Jayne’s organic ambitions even mean she pulls out bracken by hand. Kevin says
she has definitely “got the bug”. Inside the house there are piles of
organic gardening books on the kitchen table, while pots of vegetable seeds
and young plants fill every window space.
The views from the south-facing kitchen are in contrast to the north. This was
the original cottage where the Ramages stayed, before they started on the
additions, to get a feel for what they wanted to do.
The most “gardened” bit is a border outside the front door that was created in
time for the Ramages’ first exhibition in the garden. Some boulders were
left in the ground here and these get used as a display base.
The latest development is a yurt, built from a kit and placed in the garden to
house their offspring and guests.
In recent times, Lotte Glob has become a frequent visitor to the house and her
sculptures are displayed around the garden.
Stone is one of Glob’s artistic preoccupations and, inspired by the landscape
of Sutherland where she lives, she makes sculptures of flying stones,
floating stones and sitting stones. Also to be found lying around the garden
and feeling quite at home are large “books” made of stone, as if a friendly
giant had just stopped reading and wandered off up the hill.
Aberfeldy is altogether a tamer part of the world to Sutherland, where the
elements seem more elemental than in almost any other part of Scotland, but
it is the same wild aspect that drew the Ramages to their Perthshire
hillside as that which drew the Danish artist to her 16 acres of hillside
near Durness on the road to Cape Wrath in Sutherland.
Glob’s stone pieces, she says, identify with the spare hills of Sutherland,
but they seem equally at home in the more gentle curves of the Ramages’
hillside garden.
www.aberfeldywatermill.com; Glob
is to have a exhibition of her work at The Watermill from August 2 to
September 15
