Wall-to-wall brilliance

I WANTED it to look as if it has always been there,’ explains Skye, the Countess of Hopetoun, of the garden she has been making since 2008 at Hopetoun House, where she lives with her husband, Andrew, Earl of Hopetoun, and their four children. ‘People would come in,’ she adds, ‘and see that the planting is contemporary, but that the hedges were there and I had merely smudged the lines... It should look as if it has evolved, belongs and is appropriate.

‘There are times and places,’ Lady Hopetoun continues, ‘when I like people’s grand modern statements, but I don’t want to do that here. I want something that feels gentler... not that everyone likes my planting, indeed, some of my family don’t like