Description
Original watercolour and ink manuscript plan, entitled "Plan of Improvements on the New Garden at Balnagown Castle, drawn from Ideas suggested by General Wemyss, John Hay, 1814", 635 x 400mm., showing the proposed layout with orangery, grape houses, pine shed, mushroom house, gardener's lodge, melon ground, forcing pit, melon-pit, melon and cucumber frames, stock holes, hotwall to be covered with glass for peaches, hotwall for the finest French pears, sun-dial, &c.
Footnote
Note: John Hay, 1758-1836, was a leading landscape designer in Scotland, who designed gardens for Castle Semple Park, Newhailes, Alnwick Castle, and Archerfield at Dirleton. Charles McIntosh's The Practical Gardener, and Modern Horticulturalist, 1839, refers to work by John Hay on the gardens of Lord Rosebery and the Earl of Camperdown.
"Division between gardeners, nursery-men and garden designers was vague at this time and often overlapped. In Edinburgh John Hay was best known for combining these several roles. His skills are to be found catalogued in an advertisement appearing in the Edinburgh Evening Courant in 1812 and reveal a versatile and competent man of parts." [Connie Byrom. The pleasure grounds of Edinburgh New Town, in Garden History, vol. 23, No. 1, 1995.]