Birkhall, built in 1715, is situated on the Balmoral Estate in Aberdeenshire above the river Muick. Queen Elizabeth, who occupied Birkhall when Duchess of York and later as Queen Mother, did much to modernise the house. She added a new wing (on the left in this view) in the mid-1950s and carried out the garden plans which she had made with her husband in the 1930s. Carr Linford’s watercolour was painted when the double border of pink Phlox paniculata ‘Windsor’, one of Queen Elizabeth’s favourite flowers, was in bloom.