The high wall that you can see in front of you belonged to the Buchanan sisters, Margaret, Jane and Elizabeth. It was part of their Walled Garden and you can see the main entrance which is now bricked up. The wall kept intruders and animals out. It had to be a high wall so that the wind, snow and frost didn’t affect the exotic plants and destroy them. The walled garden is 87m long and 58m wide. In the picture, there is a glass house fixed to the north wall. If you look closely at the picture there is a chimney. The reason for that is there was a separate boiler-house, where water was heated. It was then run through heating pipes round the inside of the conservatory to keep it warm. The conservatory was full of exotic plants and ferns from different countries around the world.

In the main garden, during the time that the Buchanan’s lived in Bellfield, it would have grown apple, pear, quince, greenage, cherry and plum trees. Probably some walnut and hazels perhaps even a couple of sweet chestnuts. It would have been a working garden producing herbs and a full range of vegetables for the kitchen, flowers and ornamental plants for the house and soft fruit like strawberries, raspberries, currants and gooseberries. There was another glasshouse in the garden when the family lived there and it would have been use to grow things like grapes and oranges.

In later years, the garden was for flowers, shrubs and trees – several of these also were from around the world. The gardeners would have tried to keep the garden colourful all year round and in 1953 when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned , the garden was planted out with flowers in all the colours of the Union Flag, red, white and blue.

Now there is a bowling green within the walled garden. There is still an original yew tree in the centre, with red berries. All parts of a yew plant are poisonous to humans. The roots are thin and the Latin name is Taxus Baccata. The yew can grow up to 20 metres high. The yew can live 400 to 600 years; also the yew is probably the most long-lived tree in Europe.