Mackenzie & Moncur glasshouse, Kailzie Gardens

Kailzie House was built in 1803 for Robert Nutter Campbell, a Glasgow merchant who had bought the estate in 1794; the walled garden and stable courtyard date from 1811, with eighteen-foot walls according to the estate's website. The original north-wall glasshouses were replaced in the late 19th century by the present long range, which the listing record attributes to Mackenzie & Moncur without giving an exact year. A 2023 visitor's account speaks of an installation in the 1860s, which does not match the listing record. The beginnings of the firm Mackenzie & Moncur are put at 1869 by the National Trust for Scotland and at around 1850 by the Dictionary of Irish Architects.

The estate changed hands several times: conveyed to trustees in 1830, bought by William Cree in 1914, and then the house was demolished, in 1958 according to the listing record and in 1962 according to the gardens inventory. The kitchen garden, which fell out of use in the 20th century, was restored and redesigned from 1965 by Lady Angela Buchan-Hepburn, and the gardens opened to the public in the early 1970s; according to the inventory, the glasshouse range was restored during that renovation. The walled garden, glasshouses, head gardener's house, sundial and gates have been listed at Category B since 1 March 1978 (LB49371), and the grounds appear in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes (GDL00229). Richard and Louise Vardy now look after the estate.

The listing record describes a rectangular walled garden with canted south-west and south-east corners, whose north wall carries a long, symmetrical glasshouse range in five sections. It is a Regency-style lean-to: at the centre a slightly projecting gabled planthouse, with a semi-glazed timber entrance door, houses the plants; on either side stand vineries of the same height and style; at the ends are lower sections of the peach-house type. A later glasshouse adjoins the range on the left, and chimney stacks rise from the wallhead, which the record links, without certainty, to the heated wall and the glasshouses.

The estate stresses the garden's south-east orientation, which maximises sunlight. A visitor's account mentions timber frames treated with linseed oil so that they last at least another century and a half.

The estate describes the glasshouse as filled, all summer, with fuchsias, pelargoniums and exotic plants, and writes that the Mackenzie & Moncur glasshouses shelter exotic and tender plants. The gardens inventory mentions an old wisteria, geraniums, begonias and fuchsias there.

Around the glasshouse the walled garden brings together herbaceous borders, copper beech hedges, areas of productive planting, a rose garden and an old sundial; the Laburnum Walk, created in 1980, flowers in gold in late spring. The estate also sells plants.

The glasshouse stands in the estate's walled garden, a few kilometres east of Peebles in the Tweed valley; the sources give slightly different distances, between 1.6 and 4 km. The garden opens on a seasonal calendar that should be checked on the estate's website. The site presents the glasshouse among the attractions of the walled garden; guided garden tours are offered for groups of four or more.

Combine it with the Laburnum Walk in late spring, the arboretum and the burnside walks, the stable courtyard, which holds a café and a gallery, and the estate's osprey watch centre.