Pride and Prejudice | Outdoor Performance

Join us in our outdoor amphitheatre on Wednesday 8th August for the Heartbreak Productions performance of Pride and Prejudice.

The Bennet sisters, and a host of charming young bachelors (yes, Mr Darcy will be there. No really, yes, that Mr Darcy) will be hosting an evening of comedy, romance, and more than one come-uppance, as we learn how to behave, ahem, properly. Champagne and cucumber sandwiches are permitted at this creative outdoor adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but do ensure you know how to properly use a napkin, remember to chew with your mouths closed, and please try not to fall in love with Mr Darcy, as we believe he is very soon to be engaged. (You may also want to bring a blanket or chair to sit on and an umbrella, should the weather look inclement).

Heartbreak aims to tell stories that inspire, entertain, challenge and help us come to a better understanding of human beings and how we can live together and are now in their 24th year of touring open-air theatre.

Our outdoor picnic hampers will also be available to pre-order starting from just £10.00. If you would like further information, please email restaurantmanager@gordoncastlescotland.com

Please click on the tickets below to add to basket.

Adult £11

Child (Up to 16)£7.50

Concession (65+) £9

Family (2+2) £32.50

The Adventures of Dr Dolittle | Outdoor Performance

Join us in our outdoor amphitheatre on Friday 13th July for the Illyria performance of The Adventures of Dr Dolittle.

When Doctor John Dolittle of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh is taught by his wise old parrot Polynesia how to talk to animals, news of his skills spreads far and wide. Soon animals across the world send messages asking for his help. So, he buys a leaky old ship and, together with his trusty pet-crew of Jip the dog, Chee-Chee the monkey, Dab-Dab the Duck and permanently hungry Gub-Gub the pig, sets forth on a mission to heal illness, spread compassion and gain a greater understanding of the animal kingdom. A funny, much-loved and exciting adventure, with a strong message about responsibility towards animals and the environment, this show is created by the same Illyria team who brought you an entire menagerie of animal puppets in DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD and a life-size T-Rex in THE LOST WORLD.

This show is suitable for children aged 5+

Our outdoor picnic hampers will also be available to pre-order starting from just £10.00. If you would like further information, please email restaurantmanager@gordoncastlescotland.com

Tickets available here now 

The Merchant of Venice | Outdoor Performance

Join us in our outdoor amphitheatre on Wednesday 4th July for the Illyria performance of The Merchant of Venice.

The Merchant of Venice is a funny play that deals with serious issues – in particular the keeping of promises. Wealthy Antonio borrows money from Shylock, and both are so confident about his paying it back that they jokingly adopt a ridiculous agreement: that Antonio will give Shylock a pound of his flesh should he default. Then events conspire against him so that he cannot repay the loan. Meanwhile Bassanio risks everything in the hope of winning the hand of Portia in marriage. Admittedly he succeeds – but when she gives him a ring to keep, and he is compelled to give it away, what future for their domestic bliss? Shakespeare’s great courtroom drama is by turns gripping, funny, romantic and thought-provoking. International award-winning Illyria promise a production to keep you on the edge of your seat!

Our outdoor picnic hampers will also be available to pre-order starting from just £10.00. If you would like further information, please email restaurantmanager@gordoncastlescotland.com

Tickets available here now

Garden Swing Night

Rouge your knees, shine your shoes and prepare to enter a razzling dazzling world of swing.

For one night only five local musicians and two vocalists have joined to form ‘Garden Swing’. From the spirit of the 40s, to the original rat pack of the 50s, experience a whirlwind of live music and singing performed by a band of experienced local musicians.

Shimmy and shake to a cocktail of the best sounds of the 1940-50s. Take to the floor or just sit back and enjoy some hot live jazz and jump blues.

A Casual Supper Dining menu will be available on the evening and will be posted soon.

7.00pm for 7.30pm start

Price per ticket £15.00 (food not included)

CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS

Father’s Day

Father’s Day at The Walled Garden

Join us on Father’s Day for a Gentleman’s Afternoon at the Walled Garden on the 17th June. Treat your dad to Gourmet Burger & Beer and an Afternoon Tea.

Please see our menu options below.

Lunch Menu Served from 12-2pm

Gourmet Burger & Beer

Walled Garden 100% Beef Burger
-Classic: lemon mayo, dill pickles, WG red onion chutney and sliced Beef Tomato
-Dangerously Hot: sunripened tomatoes, corn & chilli relish, sliced jalapeno and coriander
-Deluxe: Crispy Pancetta, crispy fried onions, slice of Emmental Cheese and watercress

Walled Garden Chicken Stack
Grilled Chicken Breast, Cajun mayo, WG red onion chutney, dill pickles, beer battered onion ring and sliced Beef Tomato
Fish Finger Sandwich
Crispy breaded white fish fillets, baby gem lettuce and tartar sauce with a Lemon wedge
Walled Garden Veggie Burger
Vegetable Burger, baby gem lettuce, lemon mayo, red onion chutney, slice of Emmental cheese and sliced Beef Tomato

All Burgers served in a toasted Burger Bun, with a bucket of fries, salad garnish, homemade coleslaw and tomato ketchup
£15.45 all burgers

Free bottle of Apple & Pear Cider per Dad.

Children’s Burgers – £7.50 includes glass/beaker of diluting juice

 

Afternoon Tea Served from 2-3pm

Pork & Black Pudding Sausage Roll with Piccalilli
Welsh Rarebit finger
Mini smoked salmon bagel
Roast beef in Yorkshire pudding
Open Pastrami, mustard and pickle
Crispy Haddock Fish Finger with tartar sauce
Mini Scotch egg
Gentlemens relish and toast
Mini Cheese Scone with bacon jam
Eccles Cake, local cheese and WG red onion chutney

Tea or Coffee

£15.95 per person

Book a table here or call 01343 612317

New Head Gardener Appointed

January 11, 2018By Gordon CastleBlog, Gardening advice 3 Comments

We have lots of exciting things planned for 2018 but none more than to kick start with a new Head Gardener, Ed Bollom. Our previous head gardener John Hawley left us in November for a new life south of the border with his family.

Ed isn’t new to our Scottish oasis, he has been a senior gardener here for several years and has been working hard on our garden project. You may recognise him from some of our YouTube garden tutorials! He is also the man behind many of our amazing photographs.

So, to introduce Ed properly to his new role, here is his first blog post!

For my first garden blog post I thought I’d explain how my horticultural career brought me to Gordon Castle.

I’ve been gardening for almost 15 years now and Gordon Castle is the seventh garden I’ve worked in. My career has taken me all over the country working in historic and botanic gardens, from Osborne House on the Isle of Wight to Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. I started my journey studying sustainable horticulture at Cannington college in Somerset, motivated by a love for working outdoors and went on to work in several gardens as part of an apprenticeship scheme run by the Professional Gardener’s Guild.

My real passion has always been for productive gardening; particularly growing fruit and vegetables. As a student I always dreamed of working in a traditional kitchen garden growing plants that would actually be used rather than simply admired!

I learnt the craft of productive gardening as the gardener in charge of the organic walled garden, nursery and orchard for the Prince of Wales at Highgrove House in Gloucestershire.  I spent five fantastic years growing all the fruit, vegetables, cut flowers and herbs for the Prince and his guests. During that time I married my lovely wife Anna and we had our first child Freddie.

Ed Bollom First Blog Post Head Gardener

I first heard about the Walled Garden at Gordon Castle from my father in law, Simon McPhun, who was helping out in the early stages of the project. When Simon first showed me Arnie Maynard’s plans for the garden I thought it was far too ambitious; the kitchen garden at Highgrove was 1 acre and took all of my energy with the help of 2 other gardeners to keep it to a decent standard and here was a project to renovate a walled garden almost eight times the size!

Anna and I were happy in Gloucestershire and very busy as new parents, so we put any ideas of moving out of our minds. But I couldn’t help thinking about the walled garden project and decided that maybe we should just go and have a look at the site. When we got up to Fochabers and looked around the garden (it looked more like a building site at the time) I started to see the potential and that whilst the plans were ambitious Angus and Zara were going to make it work. It is such an unusual project I felt it was too good an opportunity to miss.

Anna, Freddie and I made the move from Gloucestershire to Moray just as we discovered that Anna was pregnant with our daughter Amelie and I started work as deputy head gardener in May 2015.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching the garden develop for the last couple of years, the garden team are fantastic and make it a friendly and productive place to work. I don’t think there is anywhere else in the country doing what we are doing on such a grand scale. Coming into my third season I feel I’m really starting to get to know the garden and hopefully can hit the ground running as Head Gardener.

I love the idea of taking this wonderful historic space and turning it into a functioning productive Garden growing the highest quality produce. Traditionally walled gardens were used to feed the great houses of our country, I like to think of the Walled Garden Project as a modern take on a very old theme. So please keep on following us on our journey, there’s plenty more to come!

A Very Merry End To 2017

December 22, 2017By Gordon CastleBlog

A Very Merry End To 2017

Christmas has come around all too quickly and the end of the year is always a time for family and reflection. As we look back on our year, there have as always been the highs and the lows of running a business and dealing with the day to day stresses whether personal, financial or physical!

Five years ago we were living in the South, Angus working long hours in London, bringing up seven children between us, and enjoying visiting his parents a few times a year, fishing or staying in Garden cottage with friends. ( the castle was let on a long lease after his grandmother died). If you had told me that as fifty something yr olds we would be running an exclusive use venue, a fishing business, holiday cottages, build a café and visitor attraction garden open to the public 363 days, start up a shop and a products business ( the gin is going down well!) I think we would have just laughed at the impossibility, but here we are! The learning curve has been steep, but we have met amazing people and made many new friends along the way.

There are so many different parts to the Estate and Walled Garden that sometimes we ‘run’ from one thing to another and never seem to have time to stop and take stock of what has been achieved in a relatively short space of time.

Gordon Castle Walled Garden Summer 2017

The Walled Garden
For us the high points were seeing the building of the garden advance yet further. The bountiful  harvest of plums, apricots, apples and pears from our ancient trees and listening to the comments of returning visitors who all said they could see such a difference in the garden from last year. It is hard when you are in the garden every day to see the progress and not focus on all the things we still have to do and improve. So lovely people, thank you! It will give us fresh impetus for planning the coming year. The ‘lows’ were the terrible Summer, horrendous for our vegetables, everyone’s morale and our pumpkins which were puny! Nothing grew except the weeds which were unstoppable. For the café staff waiting to serve on all those lovely outdoor tables, so many wasted weekends, although we were lucky with our outdoor theatres ( except Mikado!) and our birthday weekend and market day were ‘made’ by finally having some good weather. We were so excited to win ‘best food tourism experience’ and it gave everyone on site a huge lift.

Gordon Castle Autumn

The Castle
The re-plumbing and re- wiring and total re-decoration have now faded slightly from our memory as we continue to ‘fill’ the Castle with people from all parts coming to enjoy either the fishing, (not too bad a season), corporate guests wanting to give clients a special experience, some unusual wearing of kilts and plenty of whisky tasting, weddings, we did a lot of weather watching but were able to make use of the newly restored Orangery where we have replaced the roof that had collapsed and had been open to the elements for a decade, and some very happy family celebrations.

We welcomed our first festival ‘refuel 2017’ and despite the weather they are returning next year. We also had the circus and a number of smaller lunches and dinners.

Angus and Zara Gordon Lennox

The Highland Games
This has now become a ‘date’ for the diary both locally and further afield and has grown into a serious part of our year, although this year with Angus struck down with ‘man flu’ for the whole week before it was not our easiest or happiest ‘lead up’ and as the torrential rain fell on Saturday it was a very ‘wet’ low point. However the sun shone for Sunday and 10,000 people came to support the many different competitors and exhibitors which made it all worthwhile for our small team who really put the hours in, and work so hard to make it a success. It is a crazy amount of time spent for one day with so much preparation and planning needed but I think we have all created an event with a really special atmosphere, that is wonderfully supported by our local community and we could not have enjoyed more handing over a cheque to the head of Milnes and look forward to hearing what the pupils have been able to do with it. We have already started planning for next year! May 20th!

Gordon Castle Highland Games 2017

The Gordon Castle luxury branded products continue to grow, our bath and beauty products get rave reviews from the guests in the Castle and we are looking forward to having an amenities range for hotels and  restaurants during the next year.

Gordon Castle Gin Potting Shed

The gin won gold medals from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Brussels and China. It is now found in many independents and some supermarkets  so we hope to build on the success next year. More cider will be made from our apples and pears and hopefully some new products for the shop.

On a personal note I became a grandmother for the first time, to gorgeous ‘Sienna’  which has made me reflect on the miracle of new life whether a baby or rejuvenating the land and look back over the last few years as well as looking forward to all the excitements to come.

Baby Sienna

 

Zara Gordon Lennox Granny

Angus’ youngest son left school and has been working in the Walled Garden office before going to New Zealand in January! A big milestone for us to get them all through some kind of education. The rest are in the South currently and fingers crossed employed.

Geordie and Angus Gordon Lennox

We feel incredibly lucky and very blessed that we live in such a beautiful place. Although the snow is falling as I write, being in the garden after everyone has left on a Summers evening is my ‘happy place’, watching the oystercatchers or red squirrels whilst I weed or mow and watching nature perform miracles through the seasons, from seed to fully grown plant is truly inspiring and makes me feel we can all work together to try and create something that can benefit our planet and protect it for future generations. I hope we can all find time in 2018 to do that which makes us feel happy and more connected with the world around us.

Angus and Zara Gordon Lennox of Gordon Castle

Which only leaves a huge thank you to all our very dedicated and hardworking team without whom none of the above would be possible and to all our visitors, customers and clients for your continued support, we appreciate and value each and everyone one of you. ‘Tis the Season of goodwill, frosty days, warm fires and maybe even a glass or two of our gin or cider, may we  wish you and your families a very happy Christmas and amazing New Year.

Best wishes for 2018,

Angus and Zara