ANDREW HERON AND HIS KINSFOLK. 215 
year, he inherited a farm about two miles further up the burn 
called Dalaish Cairns, and he also rented for thirteen years 
some land from the Barony of Bardrockwood,) ‘‘ which was 
very convenient, it adjoining his estate.’’ In 1696 he built 
the pigeon house.* All these still exist, as well as the sun- 
dial in the wall garden, on which is engraved the initials 
SA ae 
The reputation of Andrew Heron as a gardener rests on 
the statements made in three books on horticulture, viz., 
Loudon’s Arboretum et Fructicetum Brittanicum,! published 
in 1844; Robert Maxwell’s Practical Husbandry,® 1757; and 
Bradley’s Treatise on Husbandry,? 1726. 
Loudon states that Andrew planted all the lower part of 
the valley in which Bargally stands. ‘‘ The splendid quercus 
ilex and noble beeches which you saw in 1831 are but the 
miserable relics of the magnificent forest which once rose 
between Bargally house and the river Palnure.’’!® When he 
wrote the garden and orchard had been a grass field for forty 
years, ‘‘ but some variegated hollies, now large trees, still 
remain to mark the different divisions of the garden.’’ He 
‘also quotes a local resident who purchased a trunk of silver 
fir, which, after being cut up, yielded boards 26 inches wide, 
as evidence of the size that the trees had grown to. Lady 
Heron-Maxwell, writing to Loudon, stated that Andrew after 
twenty-one years’ work had ‘‘ well stocked (the garden) with 
all kinds of fine trees and rare fruits, both stone and core; 
some portion stocked with fine flowers, and he had the green- 
house stocked with oranges and lemons, pomegranates, 
passion flowers, citron trees, oleanders, myrtles, and many 
others.’’ That Andrew Heron’s fame was far spread is 
shown by a tale given of a visit of his to London. He “‘ very 
much astonished the principal gardener, to whom he was a 
stranger, with the botanical knowledge he displayed. The 
gardener having shown him an exotic, which he felt confident 
the visitor had never seen, he exclaimed, on Mr Heron naming 
it:—‘ Then, sir, you must be either the devil or Andrew 
Heron of Bargally.’ ”’ 
Of the garden little more can be said, for no family record 
makes the smallest reference to it; it might as well have not 
