The glasshouse...

View On Black

... at Arduaine Garden

A windswept, seaside hillside of bracken and rushes might not seem the ideal choice of site for a garden, but James Arthur Campbell was obviously not deterred when he 'turned the first sod of the garden in August 1895', according to his journal.

J. Arthur Campbell was a descendent of the Campbells of Inverawe in Argyll, and in the mid-1880s, on his return from managing the family tea estates in what was then Ceylon, he looked about for a site to build a house. Finally deciding in favour of the 'green point' above Asknish Bay, he bought the site from the McIver Campbells of Asknish, built his Mansion House, as he called it, and began to set out the garden in the comparative shelter of the promontory. Apparently McIver Campbell requested that he refrained from calling himself 'Campbell of Asknish', so he coined the name 'Arduaine', solving the problem and naming the garden in one fell swoop.

Many years and much tree planting later, Arthur began the ornamental collection and by his death in 1929, the garden contained some 220 different rhododendrons, most of which were species. The garden was passed to his son Bruce, who after the difficult period of the war years, in turn bequeathed it to his son Ian, but by 1965 it had become impossible to continue and the house was sold, to become initially the Loch Melfort Motor Inn and later the Loch Melfort Hotel. The family retained the garden until 1971 when it was bought Edmund and Harry Wright, nurserymen from Essex, who dedicated the next 21 years to restoration and replanting and finally gave the garden to The National Trust for Scotland in the spring of 1992.