Threave Garden walled garden display glasshouse

In 1867 the Liverpool merchant William Gordon bought the Threave estate, near Castle Douglas, and had a Scottish Baronial house built, designed by the architects Peddie and Kinnear and completed in 1872. The National Trust for Scotland (NTS) dates the walled garden to the same year; it supplied fruit, vegetables and cut flowers to the house. The Historic Environment Scotland (HES) inventory says the walled garden and the stable block were built at the same time as the house, and that Gordon laid out the gardens in the 1880s. According to the Undiscovered Scotland guide, the original glasshouse had coal fires built into hollow walls to extend the growing season.

Major Alan Gordon, William's grandson, approached the NTS in 1948; the estate passed definitively to the Trust on his death in 1957. In 1960 the Threave School of Gardening opened, now the Trust's School of Heritage Gardening, and most of today's gardens are the work of its students. The display glasshouse that visitors enter is presented by the NTS as a careful reconstruction of the original Victorian one. Two guides, Undiscovered Scotland and Scotiana, say it was built in 1997 and has several temperature zones.

The display glasshouse stands at the end of the yew-lined central avenue that crosses the walled garden, which covers about an acre (four tenths of a hectare) according to two guides, and lies west of the house's former stable block, now the countryside centre. The NTS describes the building as a careful reconstruction of the original Victorian glasshouse, made up of three thematic rooms: a cool house, a temperate house and a hot house. An indoor pond for koi carp completes the layout. Scotiana speaks of a Victorian-style conservatory in the working walled garden.

The vanished glasshouse, according to Undiscovered Scotland, was heated by coal fires built into hollow walls.

The NTS reports collections of cacti, orchids and bromeliads in the glasshouse, spread across its three rooms, together with an indoor pond of koi carp that visitors are invited to count. Older guides describe slightly different contents: a cool house sheltering rhododendrons from Asia and a tropical house of orchids, bananas and bird-of-paradise plants; Scotiana also mentions an orchid collection built up through donations.

The walled garden around the glasshouse produces fruit, vegetables and cut flowers, some of which appear on the menu of the terrace cafe. In spring, carpets of bulbs, including Iris reticulata 'Katharine Hodgkin' and several species of crocus, cover the ground; trained apple cordons and pyramid pears blossom, and the garden has its own apple cultivar, 'Threave Castle'. In summer, broad colourful borders take over.

The glasshouse stands in the walled garden, west of the former stable block, at the end of the yew-lined avenue. The NTS recommends it on chilly spring days, when its three rooms offer shelter. Dogs are not allowed in the walled garden. Spring is the season of bulbs, and the famous daffodil bank, with over 360 varieties and dating back to 1872, flowers then; in summer, the borders take over. Allow an hour for the walled garden and its glasshouse, more with the rest of the garden, the rooms of Threave House displayed as in the 1930s, the nature reserve (ospreys, bats) and, nearby, Threave Castle on its island in the Dee.