Walled Garden on Remote Scottish Island

Visit Jura for Orwell’s Home & Exotic Plants

The Hebridean Island of Jura is the unexpected setting for a romantic walled garden bursting with exotic plants. Open to visitors all year round for a modest admission charge, the south-facing garden at Ardfin was originally planned in the 1800s as a kitchen garden for Jura House, ancestral home of the Campbells of Jura. It supplied fruit, vegetables and flowers for the estate.

Jura House Garden, hidden behind an immense Victorian wall and encircled by protective woodlands, is an oasis of serenity and fecundity, a truly 'secret' garden in Jura's wild, rugged landscape.

From the flowery car park, visitors have the choice of a lovely walk through the grounds of the estate to bring them to the garden, or for the hardier, there's the option of a longer walk following the shore with fantastic views towards Islay, Mull of Kintyre and Ireland. A guidebook and map is available at the garden's notice board where there's an Honesty Box for admission charges.

Visit Jura House Garden - Australasian Plant Collection - Wildflower Meadow & Tea Tent

Plant lovers admire Jura House Garden's more recent Australasian collection of plants from New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania, while Scottish wildflower enthusiasts delight in the native perennial species, which have been allowed to self-seed in a naturalistic manner.

In summer, the heart of the garden is the charming Tea Tent set at the edge of a wildflower meadow swaying with foxgloves and meadowsweet. It has stunning views of the sea. Payment for refreshments - which include excellent home baking - as for entrance to the garden, is by Honesty Box.

A wide selection of shrubs, perennials, seeds and bulbs, propagated and collected from stock in the garden is similarly or sale in the nursery. There are old greenhouses, an orchard and soft fruit garden, and many enticing corners and spaces to explore in the garden.

Visit Jura - Barnhill - The House Where Orwell Wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four

Jura's moorland landscape is dominated by the distinctive peaks of the Paps of Jura, which are popular with climbers. The island's resident population is a mere 200 people, supplemented by some 6 ½ thousand roaming red deer, numerous seals, dolphins and otters. There is only 1 road on the island, a single track that hugs the eastern coastline.

George Orwell lived on Jura in the 1940s at Barnhill, a remote farmhouse on the northern tip of the island, while writing his prophetic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell famously described Jura as 'extremely un-getatable' and you definitely need determination to get to wild Barnhill, which is a world away from Jura House Garden. There is still no road or track.

The House is available for holiday lets, for literati who want to soak up the Orwell experience, but they should not be surprised by the number of other admirers who are prepared to make the long, rough trek to take a peep through Barnhill's windows. Big Brother is watching.

Island of Jura - How To Get There

You have to take a ferry from Kennacraig on the Scottish Mainland to Port Askaig on the Isle of Islay, then onwards to Jura via the 8-car ferry to Feolin. Ardfin is 5 miles to the north and 3 miles south of Craighouse on the island's only road.