As offers go, the suggestion that a couple might take over a steep hill covered with brambles and litter as part of their garden was one many without a green finger to their name might have avoided.

Just getting up and down the sloping bank outside their Buckie home meant clambering on hands and knees or risk tumbling head over heels back down. Even, recalls Malcolm Schofield, the family’s rabbits struggled to conquer its extreme slope. Undeterred – and in a lesson to anyone who has talked themselves out of doing anything adventurous with their garden – he and wife Elizabeth sought expert help, by tuning into endless episodes of Gardening World.

Once an intimidating weed-choked eyesore that would make any gardener’s soul wilt, the two primary school teachers’ labour of love – and a large dollop of trial and error – has transformed the unloved waste patch into a horticultural gem so jaw-droppingly spectacular that it has scooped two major national awards.

Now the self-taught gardeners’ Buckie garden, with its winding gravel path, hilly terraces bursting with colourful blooms, luscious foliage and buzzing with pollinators, is set to join hundreds of Scottish garden gems which will open their gates to the public this spring and summer.

The garden at Cuthberts Brae in the Moray coast fishing town is one of more than 400 currently being pruned and planted in readiness for Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, an annual showcase of gardening splendour which offers visitors a peak over the garden wall into the often-hidden beauty lurking in private gardens, community allotments, from sprawling mansion homes gardens and tiny cottages.

Launched 90 years ago this year to help fund district nurses, the scheme sees gardens rarely seen by the public, open their gates so the fruits of their gardeners’ efforts can be seen by all.

For those who have put lockdown to use digging and potting, the gardens on show could either offer inspiration – or have them downing tools completely.

This year sees dozens of new ‘amateur’ gardens included in the programme, many of which thrive despite the Scottish climate and their location - such as gardens in Lanarkshire’s highest villages of Wanlockhead and Leadhills.

Sitting at a lofty 1,500ft, the especially cold winds that whip the villages ‘burn’ much in their path, while the growing season is short and the soil poor.

Undaunted, gardeners persevered to create pockets of horticultural delights, including one which pays tribute to famous sons of Leadhills with a miniature village cleverly designed to incorporate ambling paths, flowers and natural hillside mosses.

In Buckie, the Schofield’s garden emerged from 6ft high brambles and weeds to scoop Gardeners' World Magazine’s Readers Garden of the Year 2020 and be named Judges Choice Winner.

“We were trying to buy a flat area of land next to our house from the council,” says Malcolm, 40. “They said they’d sell us it if we took the bank as well.

“It was covered in brambles, plastic bags, tin cans. Every time it was a windy day, all the plastic bags would be caught in the brambles.”

The sprawling site was so steep that clearing it was a major challenge – figuring out how to plant it and make it attractive required expert help.

“We were these people who would just flick through the channels on a Friday night and think ‘Gardeners World is on, whatever’,” says Malcolm.

“We ended up recording it and watching it over and over again for inspiration.”

The couple bought hundreds of cheap perennials on special offer from gardening websites and adopted a hopeful approach of waiting to see what survived the sea spray and bitter wind.

“We wanted to make it work but we wanted to do it cheaply,” says Elizabeth, 36. “It was hit or miss for first few years, then we realised what we could throw in the garden and it would grow.”

At its peak, the steep garden is ablaze with geranium, echinacea, hydrangea and dahlia, while a patio area is shaded by towering bamboo, feathery fronds of melianthus and glossy fatsia Japonica – false castor oil plant.

“The more we involve ourselves in gardening, the more it nurtures us as well,” adds Malcolm. “We can unleash whatever creativity we have on it - it feeds back to your own soul.”

At Will Soos and Susan Pomeroy’s garden on the edge of Little Loch broom, exotic plants from South Africa, New Zealand and Chile bring dazzling colours to an already spectacular landscape dominated by the soaring slopes of An Teallach.

Where a croft once stood is a dramatic mix of herbaceous borders, trees and shrubs, vegetables, drystone wall planting, South African and Mediterranean plants, and a wild meadow The vibrant garden reflects its owners’ backgrounds – both previously worked at the National Trust for Scotland’s Inverewe Garden.

Yet according to Susan there have been moments of failure – particularly during the recent cold snap which claimed a number of precious plants, and despair from unwanted visitors intent on dining on the blooms.

“I always want to grow delphinium and tried for ten years but they were always killed by the wind or slugs,” says Susan. “I finally grew them against a wall in a cow trough with lobelia and they looked amazing.

“Overnight a slug got in and ate the lot. It was very traumatic.

“You can be quite obsessed with gardening,” she adds, “it’s exciting to get up to see what amazing things have happened, every day there is something new.”

Three hundred miles south at Amulree in Drummore, Stranraer, self-confessed ‘plantaholics’ Colin Belton, 54, and Gabrielle Reynolds, 50, have turned what was a blank canvas in 2017 into a sunny terrace, with displays of half-hardy and tender plants, exuberantly planted borders separated by serpentine grass patches, a small vegetable patch, a glasshouse and a 'wild' garden.

A collection of snowdrops brought from their old garden struggled to survive in the sandy soil, however they were delighted when a range of Southern hemisphere plants thrived.

Unusually for a domestic garden, the couple have curated a National Plant Collection of Nicotiana species – tobacco plants – and, perhaps even more unusual, their garden features an old piano, found washed up on the nearby shore.

“We spend a lot of time on the beach, so there are strange bits of scrap metal and wood in the garden,” says Gabrielle. “The piano was washed up on the beach, it’s beautifully corroded and knobbly – it looks like a sculpture.”

As well as hundreds of amateurs’ flower gardens, Scotland’s Gardens Scheme programme also offers the chance to explore allotments, therapeutic gardens which have been specially planted for the deep sensory impacts, community gardens and urban gardens, where green fingered owners have made the most of the tiniest of spaces.

In a normal year, gardens welcome up to 44,000 visitors and raise around £250,000 for 250 charities from admissions, plant sales and teas.

Liz Stewart, National Organiser at Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, said: “There are green spaces that will delight the eye and feed the soul, something we all so need at the moment.”

Details of gardens taking part are available at www.scotlandsgardens.org.