The Fernery, Younger Botanic Garden, Benmore House

The Fernery at Younger Botanic Garden, Benmore House, is a rare survival of its type, with few examples remaining in Scotland. Although now ruinous, it is an important part of the gardens at Benmore and a notable structure.

The fernery is built into a steep-sided cleft using rubble and has a rectangular plan with semicircular gables. The entrance faces south and is supported by a stone arch, with steps to either side. Inside, the high walls retain occasional built-in ledges that would have supported ferns. Only a few iron hoops remain from the original barrel roof, and the shape of the gables suggests a lantern once ran along the roof’s length. A quartz grotto with steps to either side is also within the fernery's interior. A small lean-to structure, likely the original heating plant, is located externally to the northwest.

Ferneries became fashionable in British gardens from the 1850s, reflecting a new interest in exotic plants and fern collecting, and were built until after 1900. The fernery dates to the 1870s, when the Benmore estate was acquired by James Duncan, a Greenock sugar refiner, who carried out numerous improvements, including expanding the house and building worker’s cottages, and who was largely responsible for the gardens’ layout as they survive today.

Benmore Estate is known for Benmore Botanic Garden, run by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and notable for its collection of coniferous trees, planted since around 1820.

The fernery is part of a group that includes Benmore House, the steading, North Lodge and gates, the Golden Gates, 'Puck's Hut', the walled garden, and the cottages to the east (listed separately). It sits within the Benmore-Younger Botanic Garden designed landscape.