What is recorded here

Inside high stone walls at Castle Forbes, fruit vines climbed every surface while rare flowers thrived in soil that ordinary gardens denied. Nicholas Dowdall wrote in 1682 that tuberoses needed glass assistance to live there, turning the garden into a small laboratory of heat, water and patience. The precise beds have vanished beneath later building, but their shape remains visible in the house itself: a place designed to make pleasure measurable, then to keep it alive through centuries of change.

Associated with the 17th-century house (LF008-012----) at Castle Forbes that was subsequently incorporated into the present 18th/19th-century house. Described in 1682 by Nicholas Dowdall as ‘Lovely Gardens of Pleasure inclosed by high stone Walls against which great plenty of Fruit of all sorts grows, and in the said gardens are all kinds of Flowers and Flower Trees that grow in this Kingdome, as the Lelpas Liburnum and many more, with Philarea Hedges, Lawrel, &c, and the Tubirose beareth here which is not to be raised but with ye assistance of Glasses' (Gillespie and Moran 1991, 2008). The precise location the garden has not been identified. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 18 February 2013

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.