Dorothy Graham Renton (7 April 1898 – 28 January 1966) was a Scottish gardener noted for creating

Branklyn Garden Branklyn Garden is a hillside public garden in the Kinnoull area of the Scottish city of Perth. The garden is set in in the western foothills of Kinnoull Hill. A National Trust for Scotland site, the garden was established in 1922 by John and ...

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

with her husband John. She took the

Veitch Memorial Medal The Veitch Memorial Medal is an international prize issued annually by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). Goal The prize is awarded to "persons of any nationality who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement and improvement o ...

for her work in 1954 from the

Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr (Nort ...

. Branklyn was described as "the finest two acres of private garden in the country". It is owned by the

National Trust for Scotland The National Trust for Scotland for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, commonly known as the National Trust for Scotland ( gd, Urras Nàiseanta na h-Alba), is a Scottish conservation organisation. It is the largest membership organ ...

Birth and gardening life

Renton was born in

in 1898. Her parents were Robina (born Conacher) and William Robertson, a medical practitioner. On 11 September 1922 she married John Taylor Renton (1891–1967), a chartered land agent, in Edinburgh, where she grew up. They bought two acres of land known as Barnhill Orchard, which was the land for their new house. The land was in walking distance of the centre of Perth on the lower banks of

Kinnoull Hill Kinnoull Hill is a hill located partly in Perth and partly in Kinfauns, Perth and Kinross, Scotland. It shares its name with the nearby Kinnoull parish. Summit In view from the -high south-facing summit is the Friarton Bridge, a stretch of t ...

. The new

arts and crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

house was called Branklyn and in the former orchard they laid out their gardens. The gardens were remarkable because they used unusual Asian seeds which were native to Tibet, Bhutan and China. The seeds were sourced from

Lhasa Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level city, prefecture-level Lhasa (prefecture-level city), Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Regio ...

-based naturalist

Frank Ludlow Frank Ludlow OBE (10 August 1885 – 25 March 1972) was an English officer stationed in the British Mission at Lhasa and a naturalist. Life He was born in Chelsea, London and studied at West Somerset County School and Sidney Sussex College, Ca ...

, the Scottish botanist George Forrest, English explorer

Frank Kingdon-Ward Francis Kingdon-Ward, born Francis Kingdon Ward OBE, (6 November 1885 in Manchester – 8 April 1958) was an English botanist, explorer, plant collector and author. He published most of his books as Frank Kingdon-Ward and this hyphenated form ...

, and other plant collectors. Her husband took the lead on the design and layout, but it was Dorothy who was the skilled botanist and horticulturist. In 1925 they first created their three rock gardens. Rock was quarried from nearby and transported to their garden by traction engine before being moved to the new rock gardens by crowbars. In 1934 the couple were awarded the Forrest medal by the Scottish Rock Garden Club for the first time. In 1936 the garden won again and Dorothy received 112 packets of new seeds from one expedition. They won the medal again in the following year and in 1950. In 1954 the Royal Horticultural Society awarded their Veitch memorial medal to her in recognition of her work introducing new plants. The Regius Keeper of the

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is a scientific centre for the study of plants, their diversity and conservation, as well as a popular tourist attraction. Founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants, today it occupies ...

described their creation as "the finest two acres of private garden in the country". The Rentons were founding members of the

Alpine Garden Society The Alpine Garden Society headquarters are at Pershore, Worcestershire. It is an "International Society for the cultivation, conservation and exploration of alpine and rock garden plants, small hardy herbaceous plants, hardy and half-hardy bulb ...

and the Scottish Rock Garden Club.

Death and legacy

Branklyn Garden in bloom Renton died on 28 January 1966, aged 67,''The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women'', Sue Innes and Rose Pipes (2006), p. 301 and her husband died in 1967, after which the house went into national ownership. Besides the gardens the couple left their detailed notebooks which they had made during their management of Branklyn. The gardens are made available to visitors by the

, but the house is still private. The garden is known for its dog’s tooth violets,

magnolia ''Magnolia'' is a large genus of about 210 to 340The number of species in the genus ''Magnolia'' depends on the taxonomic view that one takes up. Recent molecular and morphological research shows that former genera ''Talauma'', ''Dugandiodendro ...

Japanese maple ''Acer palmatum'', commonly known as Japanese maple, palmate maple, or smooth Japanese maple (Japanese: ''irohamomiji'', , or ''momiji'', (栴), is a species of woody plant native to Japan, Korea, China, eastern Mongolia, and southeast Russia. ...

s and a

katsura tree ''Cercidiphyllum'' is a genus containing two species of plants, both commonly called katsura. They are the sole members of the monotypic family (biology), family Cercidiphyllaceae. The genus is native plant, native to Japan and China and unrelate ...

. There are estimated to be 3,500 different types of plant, which includes the national collections of Himalayan blue poppies, at Branklyn.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Renton, Dorothy 1898 births 1966 deaths People from Perth, Scotland Scottish gardeners Scottish horticulturists Veitch Memorial Medal recipients