Walled Garden, Traquair House

The Walled Garden at Traquair House was built in 1749 for Charles Stuart, the 5th Earl of Traquair. It features a three-sided, rectangular plan with a canted angle to the east and a beech hedge replacing a wall to the southeast. The garden is enclosed by tall (18 feet high) coursed whinstone and rubble walls topped with flat ashlar copes. The walls have droved ashlar long and short quoins at the doorways located in the northeast and southwest, which have raised plain margins. Most of the copes are surmounted by turf.

On the northeast elevation, the slightly altered whinstone rubble wall varies in height and incorporates the former Gardener's Cottage, now a tea room, at the right angle. There are various entries into the garden, including a doorway with long and short quoins and a later timber boarded door. This wall adjoins outbuildings and the Garden Cottage, which is listed separately, to the left.

The northwest elevation, facing the drive, features a tall coursed and random whinstone rubble wall, also around 18 feet high, with flat stone copes and an entrance doorway to the left, which has a lintel dated 1749. The copes are topped with a layer of turf, and the wall has an arched western angle. Near the center of the inner wall, there is a small modern lean-to glasshouse.

The southwest elevation is similar in height and style to the northwest wall and has an entrance doorway to the left with long and short quoins and a later timber boarded door.

Inside the garden, the original ground plan and planting scheme have been lost, but the space is now used for recreation, featuring a seating and picnic area. There is also a display of a later 19th-century pillar sundial, although the dial is now missing, along with modern sculpture and a cast-iron fountain.