How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence,” wrote Benjamin Disraeli, though he may not have had Scotland in mind at the time.

In Allan Pollok-Morris’s collection of photographs of notable Scottish gardens, there is a sense of grand endeavour that stands out on every page like a lily in a bouquet of ragweed. A Scottish gardener faces greater trials than most — among them the batter of relentless rain, gale force winds and the bitter cold — but for two months of every year even here a garden blooms true.

Pollok-Morris spent four years travelling the mainland and islands of Scotland documenting contemporary works by 20 gardeners, designers and land artists including Andy Goldsworthy, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Charles Jencks, Penelope Hobhouse and Jim Buchanan.

“I wanted to catch them in their full glory and so that meant shooting in July and August,” he says. “It was a small window and the weather didn’t always play ball, but I got there in the end.” The result is a compendium of picture postcard landscapes less wild and sweeping than we are used to but just as rich and complex as any Munro-shadowed glen. From the beach labyrinths of Jim Buchanan to the stately rhododendrons of Cawdor Castle in Nairn, this is a side of Scotland we rarely see.

Though he admits to little or no gardening prowess, Pollock-Morris surprised himself with his creeping respect for all things horticultural. Born in Glasgow in 1972, but now based in the south of England with an accent to match, he has always been more of a city boy, though he now lives in rural Gloucestershire.

It was on a series of visits to family in Rhu on the Clyde coast that he started to realise the possibility of creating a book chronicling Scotland’s gardens.

When, in 2004, Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta came top of a poll to find the nation’s most important art work, he knew he was on to something. He drew up a wish-list and was pleasantly surprised to receive universal cooperation. But even with a final list of 20, he was struck by the diversity of the material. With his tripod in tow, he arrived at the Garden of Cosmic Speculation by Charles Jencks with a sense of awe for the task ahead.

“Here’s a garden put together with the advice of eminent scientists and astronomers, some real thinking has gone into it,” he says. “But it can be enjoyed on any level, whether you walk around contemplating the meaning of the universe or just admiring the artistry of it all. You can be bowled over by the sheer scale and imagination of the garden and you can feel at peace. It’s one of the iconic gardens of the world.”

In contrast to the intricate design of Jencks’s famous grass canvas, is the wild and sophisticated splendour of the artist Gerald Laing’s own garden, where sculptures play hide and seek behind rambling stone walls that frame waterlily-strewn ponds.

“That’s something you can say about the range of examples in the book,” he says. “People like Laing, Andy Goldsworthy, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Charles Jencks are known on the global scene but here are all their works collected in Scotland. From a cultural point of view it stands up very well to scrutiny.”

With this in mind, Pollok-Morris would like to see the tourist industry capitalise on what the country garden has to offer. Garden tourism is big business in Ireland and England but many Scots he chatted to on his travels were unaware of the gardens’ existence. All but two of those in his book are open to the public.

“The Irish government has come to understand the potential for garden tourism,” he says. “It has exploded in the last few years and the contrast between here and there is incredible. Maybe it's early days but I think a lot more could be done to make the wider world aware of how strong Scotland is in this area.

“This is an area of culture that bucks the trend of being located in the city centre. It’s an area of culture that is very strong in the countryside where the arts and culture might be harder to come across. So in the context of a rural country it’s very significant to look at it in that way.”

But can a garden, however pretty or precisely manicured, ever compete with the nation’s most treasured cultural institutions?

“The question is what makes up the perception of garden as art?” he says. “The Design Museum in London, for example, has never and doesn’t ever plan to show anything to do with garden design. But there is a movement, coming out of the Garden Museum in London in particular, that looks at the way in which garden design and landscape architecture is perceived as an art form.

“Little Sparta, in terms of art and culture, has to be regarded as one of the best gardens in the world. If you don’t see it in that way, you are probably not going to see anything else of its ilk in that way. But what’s equally interesting is to see the determination and work that goes into actually making the landscapes, getting one’s hands dirty and then keeping them that way.”

He may not be getting his hands dirty in his own back yard, but from behind the lens Pollok is devotedly green-fingered.

Close: A Journey in Scotland, Photography by Allan Pollok-Morris, Northfield Print, £19.99; Close the exhibition is at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh until Jan 11

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