Drummond Castle
Drummond Castle south of Crieff in Perthshire is celebrated above all for its extraordinary formal gardens, widely regarded as among the finest in Scotland and among the best examples of formal garden design in Britain. The castle dates from the fifteenth century as a Drummond family stronghold, largely destroyed by Cromwell's forces and subsequently rebuilt. The gardens, first laid out in the seventeenth century and substantially redesigned in the nineteenth, form a magnificent parterre arranged on terraces descending from the castle, featuring topiary, clipped yews, geometric plantings and a seventeenth-century sundial as the centrepiece. Viewed from the terrace below the castle, the scale and formal complexity of the garden creates one of Scotland's most spectacular garden compositions, open to the public on certain days during the season.