Despite being just six miles south-west of Edinburgh city centre, Riccarton Mains House enjoys a surprisingly rural location amid open fields and woodland. Its terraced garden, packed with colour and studded with topiary and mature trees, slopes up from the back of the house in the direction of the nearby Pentland Hills.
Although it has the quiet air of a place that has always been there, both the house and garden have in fact been developed over the past 50 years by Vicki and Michael Reid-Thomas, who bought the plot of land when it was home only to several derelict farm buildings. Creating the garden from scratch was a project that the couple embraced, but the site’s exposed location
