I Call It a ‘Garden’, a Place of Seeds: Geoffrey Dutton’s Lessons in Curiosity and Exploration
Geoffrey Dutton (1924–2010) was a distinguished biomolecular scientist who was also a poet, mountaineer, wild water swimmer, and the creator, caretaker and chronicler of a Highland garden in Perthshire, Scotland. Dutton saw no conflict between science and poetry, and eight acres of a steep and rugged hillside provided him with an experimental ground to explore this and other complex interrelationships in his search for the new. For fifty years, Dutton maintained what he called a ‘marginal garden’ – a marginal site guided with marginal effort to maximum marginal effect. His lifelong ecological dialogue with the garden was ahead of its time and is today largely forgotten, despite Dutton’s multiple publications in both prose and verse.
As the garden slowly transitions back into the wild margin, this ongoing project aims to investigate its land-based lessons and reposition Dutton as a significant figure in contemporary garden and landscape discourse and practice.
For an introduction to Dutton and his work, see this publication, published in January 2025 to mark the centenary of his birth.
