Acts of creation
For Johnson and Boswell it appears that orchards, along with the state of the nation, the landscape and its people, were all worthy of note and contemplation during their journey to the Western Isles in 1773. It would seem that orchards in particular symbolised an awareness of a more refined and generally progressive cultural mindset, a betterment to life and that of the landscape.
If however on their journey they had visited the Carse of Gowrie, the low lying land, sheltered from the North by the Sidlaw Hills and bordering onto the River Tay between Perth and Dundee (a town they ’stopped a while’) they would have discovered a landscape full of large and small orchards, with cultivation going back 600 years and having numerous varieties of apples and pears.
The images are from the Carse of Gowrie and what are now just remnants of those same orchards Johnson and Boswell would have encountered and most likely have commented upon.
Back
