Shepherd House Garden

Charles and Ann Fraser have lived at Shepherd House, in the village of Inveresk, seven miles East of Edinburgh, since 1957 and yet the garden is still evolving. The garden is one of only two Scottish gardens featured in Rosemary Verey’s book ‘Secret Gardens’. A secret garden?

The single acre at Shepherd House is in fact many secret gardens, nestling into each other like Chinese boxes. Like any well planned garden, it reveals itself slowly. Nearest the house, the Millennium garden is planted with lavender, irises, oriental poppies, salvias and much more.

The central and most arresting feature is an elegant stone rill which flows forty yards beneath rose covered arches which are under planted with nepeta and alliums.
The rill connects the central formal pond with a raised pond at the back of the garden which contains four fountains causing the water to overflow down the rill.