I was commissioned late 2024 to photograph a garden created by Geoffrey Dutton (1924 – 2010). Bio chemist, poet, writer, editor, mountaineer, wild water swimmer and not least gardener. With 200 published books to his name.

Link to my images: HERE.

Though now semi wild the garden is still a place of interest and really rather wonderful. I asked his daughter who now oversees the garden if I could continue to photograph for the follow year, which she agreed. The plan was to come and photograph regardless of the weather conditions one day a month and for me to create images that reflect the unique location and Geoffrey Duttons work as gardener and poet.
As of February 2025 and four visits the garden has been in its winter state, skeletal in form so it will be interesting how the images progress into a lan

dscape full of leaf covered trees. So far there has been no significant snowfall so in part the year will on my visits illustrate the weather.

The garden is at a marginal place between the Scottish highlands and the lower more fertile lowlands. Dissecting part of the garden is a deep gorge with waterfalls and swimmable pools if brave. Though now overgrown in part and many of the more tender plants that Dutton planted have not survived tit still remains very much a garden.

'I Call It a ‘Garden’, a Place of Seeds: Geoffrey Dutton’s Lessons in Curiosity and Exploration.'

A small book of the garden and the result of a research project by Barbara Prezelj, ESALA, ECA, University of Edinburgh, commemorating Dutton can be downloaded as a PDF: HERE. (a bit slow to render but it will).

The book contains images (mine and by Dutton) and excellent essays by; Alec Finlay; Billy Lucas; Barbara Prezelj; and poems selected by Kirsty Jones, with one written by her following the death of her father.