Fern Dome (geodesic) and Conservatory, Attadale Gardens

Attadale is an estate of about 30,000 acres (some 12,000 hectares) on the south shore of Loch Carron, formed from the lands of Clan Matheson. According to the estate's own history page, the central part of the house dates from 1755; Baron Schroder bought Attadale in 1910 and his son, Captain William Schroder, developed the garden. Other sources place the Schroders' arrival in the late nineteenth century, so the chronology varies from text to text. The Macpherson family has owned Attadale since 1952. Storms later brought down much of the old woodland, which was felled, in the late 1980s according to the estate and Discover Scottish Gardens, in 1980 according to Visit Wester Ross; Nicky Macpherson, a painter, recreated the present garden on that clean slate.

A photograph published on Geograph and taken on 3 September 2009 already shows the dome. It stands in a sunken fern garden which, according to Scotland's Gardens Scheme, was developed on the site of an early nineteenth-century drain. The conservatory, set against the front of the head gardener's cottage, has had its interior remodelled: the old benches of pelargoniums and fuchsias gave way to drystone walls and a small watercourse with a pond.

The dome is a geodesic shell: a network of triangles carried by a slender frame of dark bars and filled with translucent triangular panels. It stands on a low mossy stone wall, with a door on one side, as several freely licensed photographs taken between 2009 and 2025 show. The photographs establish that the envelope is closed and transparent. A 2017 Geograph caption states that the dome keeps temperature and humidity in the range the fern collection needs. OpenStreetMap maps it as a greenhouse named Fernery, tagged "visual estimate", with a diameter of roughly 8 metres.

The conservatory is of a different order: a structure attached to the front of the head gardener's cottage. Its former bench layout has been replaced by drystone walls and a small stream with a pond, meant to provide suitable conditions for exotic plants from subtropical climates. Scotland's Gardens Scheme credits the Gulf Stream, the surrounding hills and the rocky cliffs with creating the microclimate of the garden as a whole.

The collection consists of tender ferns, meaning species that would not survive a Wester Ross winter outdoors. Around the dome, the sunken fern garden combines spectacular ferns of the genus Dicksonia with other shade-lovers such as the mouse plant (Arisarum proboscideum) and the giant Himalayan lily (Cardiocrinum giganteum), according to Discover Scottish Gardens, which adds that many other ferns grow well there and that the sound of running water is a constant companion. Visit Wester Ross notes that ferns are offered for sale, and the kitchen garden has a polytunnel selling plants grown on site.

In the conservatory, described as planted with ferns by Visit Wester Ross, drystone walls, a stream and a pond host exotics from subtropical climates according to the garden's former website; the two descriptions do not match exactly.

The dome lies in the sunken fern garden, which Discover Scottish Gardens describes after the Japanese Garden and the old Rhododendron Dell in its tour of the grounds. The garden covers 20 acres, and a travel guide allows two to three hours to see all of it, with the water gardens, the Japanese garden, the kitchen garden and the sculptures scattered among the trees. The garden is open from April to October; late May and early June are, according to that guide, when the rhododendrons are at their peak. Attadale railway station, a request stop on the Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh line, opens straight into the garden through a pedestrian gate. Paths are mostly gravel, generally suitable for wheelchairs but uneven in places, and a self-service cafe stands near the entrance.