Some History
From the limited information available, three cottages stood on the site of the current Waterside property in the late 18th century. One of these was an inn, and the poet Rabbie Burns is believed to have visited the place on several occasions, while a friend of his was courting Bonnie Jean O'Craigieburn. He is believed to have written the poem 'Willie brewed a peck o' malt' in the pub garden. The houses and ground were at the time part of the Craigieburn estate, and around 1840, the owners of the estate constructed Waterside, replacing two of the original cottages. By this time it was fashionable for the richer town dwellers to have a country property, and this development is likely to have had a keen eye on the Edinburgh market. And it would seem that the house and about 2 acres of ground were sold, together with the remaining cottage as a gardener's house, although the buyer isn't known.
Opposite: Waterside house and Rock Garden in 1957
A later prominent owner of the property was Sir Ernest Wedderburn. He was a partner in the famous Edinburgh firm of solicitors, Shepherd and Wedderburn, which still exists. It isn't known exactly when he bought the property, but it must have been shortly after the 2nd World War. He used the property for weekends and summer breaks, and was responsible for developing a garden of heathers and conifers, which was opened on occasions to the public.
The photograph on the leftdates from the period of Wedderburn ownership and shows the garden in the mid-late 1950s
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By this time, Sir Ernest had extended the grounds, buying the woodland to the north from the Forestry Commission, and a part of a neighbour's field to the south, bringing the grounds to their current extent.
Because the Wedderburn family weren't present all of the time, they employed a manager to look after the property and gardens for them. For much of the time, this was a Mr Bob Shanklin, who clearly had a love of the place as well. The photograph on the right is of him riding an early ride-on motor mower. The images above and below show the range and the style of the gardens created, and clearly this involved a lot of creativity as well as a lot of work.
Shortly after moving into Waterside, Robert and I discovered that Bob Shanklin's daughter still lived in Moffat. We made contact, and she kindly visited Waterside, and gave us much information. She lived here until she was 20 years old, and was full of detail about the house and gardens, and we are most grateful to her. She also kindly gave us old photographs to copy and permission to publish them on the web. The photograph to the left shows her with her fiancee in front of the old rock garden (now las no more).
The enlarged gardens were probably just starting to mature when Sir Ernest died, and the property was sold shortly afterwards. From that time, the gardens, although initially maintenaned, gradually declined becoming overgrown with self-seeded birch, willow and other scrubby plants. When Robert and I bought the place in 2005, most of the original beds and borders had disappeared and those still remaining were very overgrown and full of weeds. Many of the trees had been left to grow very large, in some cases entirely blocking the view of the Moffat Water from the house. You can get an idea of the state of the garden around the house from the photograph taken in July 1997.
There were henhouses, old dog runs and who knows what littering the place. The only things that seemed to have been maintained was the lawn in front of the house, some of the old paths and tracks and a large expanse of mown grass where the Amphitheatre and meadows are now. You can get an idea of how things used to look from the image on the left taken of the main garden as it was in 2005.
Obviously, then, the first year or so for us was basically cutting and burning. We took out a number of very large Chamaecyparis trees that were blocking views and taking up a lot of space. The birch, willow, rowan and broom scrub was mostly cleared out, leaving a few more mature rowans and birch. Quite a lot of Rhododendron ponticum had invaded a number of spots and that was removed (although some of it is still growing back ...). And we ended taking down and cutting back some very large and overgrown Rhododendron hybrids - in some cases just to see what else was there. Despite the ongoing scenes of plant carnage which occasionally induced feelings of desperation in us, by the end of 2006, the main garden had been cleared and much more of the structure and remaining features of Wedderburn's time were revealed.
This allowed us to start planning the garden properly - and, of course, planting. We wanted to use as much of the old features that still remained (some of which we had to sacrifice such as the bulk of the old rock garden that emerged from the cutback which disappeared under a pile of rubble and dirt in order to make the current Terrace). We used mown paths between long grass to create much of the additional structure, allowing us to develop incipient meadow areas as well as separating off different areas from each other.
The image shows the view of the house from Birch Bank in early 2007 after cutback.
One of the main innovations was to turn an (almost) circular area of mown grass into the main herbaceous and shrub area in the garden which we called the Amphitheatre as the ground forms a shallow depression that rises on one side. Although intended to be an open area where you could freely walk through and view from any angle (as shown in its early stages left), the depredations of hares, deer and wandering sheep changed the design into a fenced and hedged space cut off from the surrounding areas. From this other areas were developed, trees and shrubs planted, eventually developing into the garden as it is today, whose structure varies little since Robert and I first laid it out in 2007 although, of course, trees and shrubs that we planted then are getting mature and there are a lot more plants!
© Ronnie Cann 2021