When Agnete Samdahl and her husband Roland Bonney moved to Stobo in 2021, they’d been looking for a farm. They found the perfect place in Peeblesshire’s picturesque Tweed Valley, but as well as the acres of farmland they envisaged buying, they also took on one of the region’s best-known gardens: Stobo Japanese Water Garden. “A water garden wasn’t what we were intending to buy, but when we walked through it, the serenity of it was certainly a major factor in our decision. It just has such a calming influence,” says Agnete.
That there’s a Japanese water garden in the middle of this most Scottish countryside is down to Victorian cricketer Hylton Philipson, who owned Stobo Castle from
