The Monkey Puzzles of Lauriston Castle

Five monkey puzzle trees stand near the rose garden at Lauriston Castle, planted close to the exact year the species became fashionable enough for anyone outside a botanic garden to own one. Araucaria araucana arrived in Britain in 1795, brought back by the naturalist Archibald Menzies, but stayed a rare curiosity until 1843, when the nurseryman James Veitch sent the plant collector William Lobb to Chile specifically to gather seed for commercial sale. That single expedition is why Victorian Britain filled its gardens with monkey puzzles almost overnight, and Lauriston's five, planted around that same pivotal year, are plausibly among the first large scale plantings of the species anywhere in the country, though no dated planting record for this specific garden survives to confirm it outright. Chilean by origin and built for volcanic slopes and heavy snow, they are unmistakable even from a distance: rigid, spiralling branches armoured in sharp scale like leaves, a shape nothing else in a Scottish garden shares. The castle itself, an Edwardian time capsule left almost untouched since its last owners donated it to the city in 1926, sits behind them. The grounds are free to walk. Only the castle's furnished rooms require a ticket, and the trees do not care either way.