APPARENTLY THE PRINCE OF WALES visits Newby Hall in Yorkshire once a year to view its garden beds—such is its reputation as a garden of significance and agreeable design …

FOR WHATEVER REASON, I’d never made it over the border. During the number of visits I’ve made to the UK, there had been an equal number of cancelled hotel rooms in Edinburgh. Plans changed, there was never enough time, and Scotland had remained elusive—that mysterious, haunting place to the North.