Hospitalfield Gardens Arbroath

Hospitalfied Garden - On the site of the medieval hospital the 19th century artist Patrick Allan Fraser and his wife Elizabeth created this most important Arts & Crafts estate with the grand house at its centre.
The Trust continues to activate their vision, supporting contemporary artists and learning in the arts whilst also caring for the significant heritage.
The walled gardens at Hospitalfield have recently been redesigned by the innovative designer Nigel Dunnett and are part of an ongoing and energetic redevelopment of the gardens, grounds and buildings. The medieval benedictine layout of the site remains evident yet the walled garden is adjacent to the much later Arts & Crafts neo gothic red sandstone house which opened as an arts school in 1902. The walls give shelter to a garden which overlooks the North Sea and which benefits from the wonderful light and long summer nights of the East Coast of Scotland.

Dunnett was asked to tell eight hundred years of garden history through his design so allowing the story from the Benedictine hospital to present day to unfold. The design includes orchards and meadows, borders and medicinal planting. Glass houses, now long gone, were part of the garden from the beginning of the 19th century growing exotic fruit and flowers. Early photographs of these structures inspired the architects Caruso St John who have designed the café and restored the fernery. Designed by Allan-Fraser c 1870, this grotto like structure is now home to a collection of ferns gifted by the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh and thrive in their new surroundings.

The garden is well looked after by the groundsman and the many volunteers who give their time and have a strong sense of ownership of the garden. Dunnett has designed the lower garden to create separate small 'rooms' protected by hornbeam hedges, some of these he has designed and others he has left for the community that looks after the garden to design and plant.