A solstice trip to Drummond Castle Garden

The longest day of the year seemed as good as any to take a drive into the beautiful Perthshire countryside. The destination was Drummond Castle, and after a nice lunch and walk around the nearby town of Crieff my companion and I turned into the long and narrow beech-lined drive in search of what Historic Scotland calls "the best example of formal terraced gardens in Scotland." 

I think it's safe to say that neither of us find Italianate-style gardens particularly compelling, and formal parterres usually leave us cold. We do know, however, that this style of garden is designed to impress, and on that count the initial view of the garden at Drummond succeeds. 

A few steps beyond the castle courtyard the garden unfurls 60 feet below like the saltire it is meant to represent. Blue lavender, which wasn't yet in bloom, and silver Anaphalis form the flag of Scotland. This combination of Scottish patriotism with Italianate terracing and French elements makes for a garden that, although striking, left me feeling confused and questioning. 

All gardens are amalgamations of changing fashions, historical periods, and owners. And Drummond, which has been in development for a mind-boggling five centuries, is no exception.

The castle dates to 1490, and the first garden was laid in the 1630s. The formal gardens and terracing were added 200 years later with the long vista through the far woods. This garden has seen war under Oliver Cromwell, Jacobite uprisings, and been walked by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In the 1950s the gardens were refurbished, and since 1978 have been maintained in a trust. 

Even taking the cumulative effect of so much history into account, elements of the garden felt "stuck on" or assembled together without a sense of cohesion. I sat and looked at the garden for a good long while and found myself playing the editing game, wondering what could be subtracted to make the picture before me make sense. Would it be the bright white urns and sculptures? Or the occasional oddly shaped topiary? Or maybe additions were in order, perhaps in the form of more acid-yellow Acers, which effectively brought nice lightness to the composition. 

Walking down through the garden wasn't particularly interesting but for the view back up to the castle. I suppose I'm just not a huge fan of box broderie infilled with not-yet-blooming roses and patchy bedding plants. And topiary usually just strikes me as bizarrely contrived. Or maybe I just needed a corset, some petticoats and a bit of courtly intrigue for this garden to stir me.

Instead, what was most interesting was the trick of perspective played in this garden, and how the formality disguises a significant slope through the five-acre site. It's objectively interesting, but hardly raises the pulse. 

I did enjoy the kitchen garden, which is cleverly tucked into the south-facing slope behind the garden's far hedge. The brick walls made the perfect suntrap for growing climbing roses and espaliered fruit trees, and I'd love to have the potting sheds, cold frames, glasshouse, and fruit cage at my disposal.

I always find it funny to see plants that I am used to growing outside in Virginia, such as everything in these photos--figs, tomatoes, peppers, sweet corn, and grapes--being so coddled in Britain's colder climate. This method of indoor food cultivation has its roots in the Victorian-era rise of glasshouse innovation. To me it feels like it will never evolve out of antiquity, which leaves me equally charmed and frustrated. 

I was pretty impressed, and jealous, of this amount of bench space devoted just to Streptocarpus hybrids. My own collection is quickly outgrowing the only window in my flat that gets even marginally enough light to keep the plants alive.  

Incidentally you may have seen Drummond Castle on television just this year and not even known it. The gardens stood in for Versailles in the second season of Outlander, a show worth watching because it is thought-provoking, beautiful (particularly the costuming), and features one of my favorite female protagonists in the character of Claire.

So have a look at Outlander to catch a glimpse of Drummond, or visit it yourself if you're headed Perthshire-way. Though it didn't move my soul, it's still a striking garden that I'm glad to have visited on the longest day of 2016. 

Shepherd House Garden

Yesterday I cleared one of the biggest hurdles of this school program, a graded unit exam covering every course and topic undertaken this year. No matter that we were tested as the year progressed, the Scottish Qualifications Authority thinks it fun to trot everything out again for one more rodeo. Back from storage came notes and flashcards on soil science, plant nutrition, integrated pest and disease management, taxonomy, classification and systematics, ecology and plant conservation, and designing and managing botanical collections. In the two weeks of intensive study for this exam, hardly a day went by that I didn't rip a flower to shreds, prodding its nether regions searching for clues to its family. I spoke half my words in Latin, and my mind was wound so tight I was telling people in my dreams, "I'm so tired." 

But with the exam behind me, and despite more academic challenges looming ahead, today is devoted to full-on mental recovery. The Edinburgh weather is cooperating with cold (45°F, 7°C) grey, and steady rain. Despite being put through the wringer lately with all things horticultural, I choose to decompress by writing about a garden. That's a pretty good sign I'm doing something I love. 

A few weeks ago, on the first truly spring-like day of the year, I took a trip to Shepherd House Garden in Musselburgh. I'd been last year, and this repeat visit confirmed that this is one of my favorite small gardens. At about one acre, it's a perfectly manageably sized jewel and a treasure trove of ideas I'd like to implement in my own next garden--including the resident white doves that strut and coo along the rooftops. 

The garden's creator, Ann Fraser, is a trained artist who studied botanical illustration where I am studying at RBGE. Her artist's eye is clearly evident in her color choices, plant combinations, and the finely crafted touches, such as the pebble mosaic below, that make the garden a very personal creative statement. 

What I like about this garden is it has formal structure with mature trees, hedging and a strong main axis leading from a fountain, down a rill, and into a koi pond. But around that axis the flow is organic and in parts a little wild, as in the stylized "meadow" planting below with an adjoining shady "woodland." Despite being intensely designed and no doubt highly cultivated, this design mimics a natural glade. 

I really appreciated the crisp edging along the grass pathways, something that prior to studying horticulture in Britain I always thought was a waste of time. But image the image above without that strong edge underpinning the beds and leading the eye further along the path. The edge is the necessary structure in this loose planting arrangement. 

I like that edibles are incorporated into the garden's design, with trained berry cordons lending vertical structure and low-growing vegetables serving as carpet bedding. But it's not all on display--there is also the ever-important production garden tucked behind a high hedge where more vegetables are grown, closer to the potting shed, glasshouse, compost piles, and chicken run. 

Two aspects of the garden stuck out at me, especially upon viewing these photos. First, I would have preferred that the blue tuteurs in the image above were straightened and leveled. Because they provide a great deal of the structure and formality to an otherwise free-flowing space, I think it's important that they stand up at attention. Second, throughout the garden neon green netting was used as a plant support. I have no doubt that the netting will soon be rendered invisible by vigorous plant growth, but for an early spring open day it detracted from the beauty around it. Perhaps jute would have been a better choice for the more high-profile areas of the garden. 

I liked this creative use of Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens' with Echeveria sp., above, and black Tulipa 'Paul Scherer' was just one of the great tulips at Shepherd House that had me reconsidering my distaste for the genus. 

I especially like these espaliered apples (Malus sp.) trained as fencing. Originally I'd thought they were stepover apples, but further research reveals stepovers are really just horizontal cordons, trained to only one branch. Some day I hope to get a chance to experiment with ornamental pruning, and the apples at Shepherd House are inspiration. 

Having visited for the May open day two years in a row, I look forward to returning to Shepherd House in mid June to see how the garden transitions out of the tulips and on to something else that will no doubt be just as beautiful. 

Jade vine: A color unlike any other in the plant world

The jade vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys) is blooming at the Botanics, and it's a must-see. This member of the Fabaceae family---closely related to your bog-standard garden runner bean---has turquoise flowers in a color unique in the plant world. These images aren't Photoshopped. The jade vine blooms are actually the color of a Caribbean sea, and, upon closer inspection, reveal dusky purples edging toward pink and navy blues.

Jade vine is native to the Phillipines, and must be kept above 59 degrees Fahrenheit to grow. Despite living in Scotland, albeit in a warm glasshouse, the vine at the Botanics is in fine form this year with more than 70 inflorescences reported by its caretaker. She told me she gave it a hard prune last year and was afraid it wouldn't bloom at all. Instead it's done the opposite. It's one of those plants that doesn't look real, and that's the most wonderful thing about it.

 

 

A bright spot in the winter garden

I picked up a few Primulas at a big-box garden center in February, desperate for some color to fend off the late winter (nay, almost constant) Edinburgh grey. Many people, especially in the horticultural circles in which I now run, disparage these commonly available modern Primula cultivars as vulgar and common, but I love them because in the U.K. there are so many more colors and forms available than in the U.S. This makes them novel and exciting to me. And, at a few quid, they've been pumping out color in my window box for months. That's a darn good value for the brightest spot in my Scottish winter garden.

 

 

Feeling patriotic

The American Eagle Foundation has a fantastic web cam up right now, trained on a bald eagle nest at the U.S. National Arboretum. I've been watching it these past few days as two chicks have recently hatched in the 5'x6' nest. Here's one of the parents feeding a freshly caught fish to a chick with a tenderness that belies its size. 

I have a real fondness for these D.C.-based web cams. I was working in D.C. as a science technical editor in 2005 when the baby panda Tai Shan (better known as "Butterstick") was born at the National Zoo. Most all of my work colleagues tuned into the zoo Web cam to watch this baby panda grow up, and we'd shout over our cubicle walls whenever we noticed something particularly adorable. That Web cam was the perfect way to alleviate what was, to me, the soul-crushing tedium of technical editing. 

If you ever have a chance to visit the U.S. National Arboretum, do. It's a bit out of the way in northeastern D.C., but worth it especially for the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum housed in its grounds. I profiled the museum and its director when I was working as a garden writer for a D.C. newspaper, and that visit made me fall in love with bonsai and introduced me to viewing stones. If you can't visit in person, the museum has a beautiful Web site with photos of many of their amazing trees.  

Brand-new Iris reticulata in the Alpine House

Tuesday morning began with an in-depth tour of the Alpine department at the Botanics for our Managing Plant Collections course. The Alpine yard, which is off-limits to the public, is the closest you'll find to a secret garden at RBGE. One ducks through a small wooden door in a Clematis-draped wall and crosses the stone threshold to another world full of tiny treasures in rockwork beds, glasshouses, and cold frames. 

Early spring is the best time to visit the publicly accessible Alpine House, above, which delivers the most concentrated spot of bloom in the February garden. The color on a rare sunny day is so spirit-lifting that a visit should be prescribed by the NHS along with its recent Vitamin D recommendations. 

Some very special Iris are blooming in the Alpine house right now: very cool new cultivars by Canadian breeder Alan McMurtrie. I loved the mixed up browns and blues, and sea green on an Iris is mind-boggling. It's so neat to see colors one doesn't usually associate with Iris reticulata on these brand-new cultivars.

Later that night, at home, I opened my February RHS Garden magazine to find a great profile of Mr. McMurtie and profiles and photos of the very plants I'd just seen growing: 'Spot-On,' 'Sunshine,' 'Sea Breeze,' 'Eyecatcher' and several others. You can read the article on Mr. McMurtie's site here.

The display of cultivars, such as these Iris, is controversial in botanical gardens. Some argue that botanical gardens should exist to safeguard straight species, often with an eye toward educating the public about these plants' threatened habitats while at the same time performing ex situ conservation. However, a lot of dedication, time, and research goes into the science of plant breeding, and those stories are educationally valid as well. 

Regardless of which side of the species/cultivar debate is right, it is still a great feeling to be studying in a garden that has access to some of the newest and most interesting things happening in the plant world, and working relationships with breeders making scientific breakthroughs. If I weren't at the Botanics, I would have just had to enjoy those Iris through magazine photos. But to see them in person brings them to life.  

Packwood House and the smirr: Part one

During today's rainy plant ident walkaround I learned a new Scots word to add to my collection of ways to describe horrible weather: smirr, a mist-like drizzle that coats everything. Now I know what to call this phenomenon whereby it seems to rain upward, from the ground, soaking pant legs as much as shoulders. 

The weather's been pretty horrible, with only a few days of sun since Nov. 1. Even the hardy natives are confessing clandestine trips to tanning beds for emergency Vitamin D top-ups. Instead of posting images of grey, grey, grey, let's take a trip back in time to last June, which was the last time I was outside and somewhat warm barring my trip back to the U.S. this autumn. And the kicker is I wasn't even in Scotland! I was much further south in England, on study tour with my class.

We stopped by Packwood House, in Warwickshire, and looking at these brightly colored and blooming garden photos is just what I need on this cold, wet night. 

Packwood House dates back to a humble farmhouse built in 1556. The property was home to the Fetherston family for 300 years before being purchased by Alfred Ash in 1904. The home stayed in the Ash family until it was signed over to the National Trust in 1941. 

Packwood House gardens are most notable for their collection of more than 100 yews (Taxus baccata) representing the "Sermon on the Mount. Each tree is clipped in a distinct fashion to represent, as my professor said, the diversity of humanity. The yew garden was designed in the mid-17th century by John Fetherston, and some of the shrubs are more than 50 feet tall. The head gardener, and our guide for the visit, explained the challenge of maintaining the yews on clay soil that's prone to water logging as well as compaction by the many visitors to the garden.

I found the yews the least interesting of all the areas at Packwood. Though they are technically impressive, I am not a huge topiary fan, and the dark and looming shrubs created a foreboding feeling in that section of the garden. Much more enjoyable were the bright borders and dry garden, which came into being in a trouble spot where more water-loving plants failed to thrive. 

The nearby borders made me rethink my feelings about purple. The Allium sp. were pretty impressive, and the color worked so well with the red brick behind. 

Here's one of the staff cutting a perfectly striped lawn with a cylinder mower. 

Pretty gardens are all good, but I'm always interested in showing the horticulturists who work so hard to keep them looking nice. All too often garden photography shows sterile perfection, with entire landscapes looking as though they'd sprung fully formed from the goddess Flora's green finger. But as anyone who's hefted a spade knows, gardening is hard, dirty, physically taxing work. I like to see the people doing that work, and their tools, which are just as beautiful to me as perfectly pristine, but empty, landscapes. 

Up next we'll venture further afield at Packwood House, visiting the orchard, forest follies, and the vegetable garden...Until then, I leave you with evidence of the weather: my winter twigs from today's walkaround. Two hours after getting home, the paper is still puddled! It's the smirr, I tell you, the smirr! 


Looking back: 2015 in photos

As 2016 gears up I want to say goodbye to 2015 with a few of the thousands of photographs I shot last year. Looking at these pictures I'm reminded of how much my world expanded in 2015, physically, academically, and personally. I saw more beautiful things than I can recount, deepened relationships with new friends and reconnected with old, learned more than I thought possible, and walked through some of the world's finest and most famous gardens including Beatrix Potter's Hill Top Farm, Cambo, Shepherd House, Chatsworth, Packwood House, Sudeley Castle, Hanbury Hall, Rousham, Hidcote, Floors Castle, Regent's Park, Longwood, Winterthur, Chanticleer, Crarae, Little Sparta, Benmore, and Berlin's Botanischer Garten. Most important, I was never at a loss for inspiration or challenge. 2015 set the bar pretty high, but I have no doubt 2016 will be even better. Happy New Year to all of you!

Edinburgh Solstice

Today will be just six hours and 57 minutes long, and what little sunlight there is on this darkest day of the year will soon be obscured by the heavy rain moving in from the west. Sunlight has been in short supply lately, but yesterday my brother, who is visiting from the U.S., and I walked up Calton Hill and were surprised by a few breaks in the clouds. This city, which can look so bleak in the grey, lit up for a few seconds in the low rays.

Tonight's Solstice celebration will be lighting lots of candles to beat back the dark, cooking dinner with friends and family, and then treking out for a pint and a fireside pub quiz. I have really enjoyed the coziness and hibernation of the recent dark days this winter, but I am always happy to welcome the returning light. I hope that whatever your Solstice plans are they bring you hope and joy.

Ferns on fire

Today we were treated to a great lecture on ferns by Dr. Heather McHaffie, MBE. Dr. McHaffie is a naturally enthusiastic teacher, and it was pure joy to be in her presence for a few hours. 

Near dusk, which is around 3:30 p.m. these days in Scotland, we went into the empty arid greenhouse for a magic trick. Dr. McHaffie had a squeeze-ball full of Lycopodium powder consisting of dry spores derived from fern-like plants. When lit by a match these oil-rich spore ignite into a glorious fireball. Lycopodium powder has been used for fireworks, flashbulbs, and magicians' tricks. We all had a go at shooting fire from our fingertips in what felt like a sacred circular rite.

The takeaway?

Ferns are great. 

FireWeb.jpg


Mushrooming at the Botanics

Yesterday was one of those "pinch me, this is my life?" moments that have come fast and furious this autumn.

The morning was spent in a fascinating lecture elucidating heathland ecology and management, which to a person from a land lacking in heath is especially interesting. The idea that the mysteries of a particular land can be unlocked by knowing their native plant species is intoxicating. I heard my name so often, as in Erica cinerea, Erica tetralix, etc., that I had mental whiplash.

After lunch a lovely veteran mycologist and researcher took the class mushrooming in the Botanics. As a class we picked more than a dozen, maybe two dozen, different species and passed them around, smelling and feeling in what I can only describe as communal sensory wonder. Our lecturer's joy in identifying each was infectious--we were all held in thrall as his eyes lit up with excitement and recognition at our finds. It's a look I've come to know as inherent to the many botanists and plantspeople I've befriended over the past year. It's a look that clearly says they are living a vocation and not just a job. And it's what drives me to join them in spending the rest of my life dedicated to a subject that I find so limitless and fascinating that I don't want to do anything else.

A good friend made a comment to me last summer when I told him I'd come home from working since 7:30 a.m. in the Botanics glasshouses only to spend even more hours joyfully tending my own garden. He said something along the lines of how lucky you are to have a job you want to do even when you leave it. This comment really struck me because although I have enjoyed most all of the jobs I've had, this is the first that I want to do all. the. time. And because a job is so much of a life, I have always wanted to find one that fits this bill. At certain points I wanted to give up, discouraged by people who tried to convince me to settle for mediocre employment and to just be happy for a paycheck, saying that "a job is just a job." I couldn't accept this, but for years I felt I was chasing an impossible dream.

Now I know I am not.

Benmore Botanic Garden

The second year of the HND/BSc at the Botanics has hit hard, and between the group presentations, endless Latin names, specialist project research, and revision there hasn't been much spare time to update the blog. I did, however, spend last spring and summer and even this fall visiting some pretty spectacular gardens in England, Scotland, and the United States. Eventually I will get around to sharing them here, but in an effort to be moderately timely let's start with one I went to last week: Benmore Botanic Garden.

Benmore is one of four gardens in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh portfolio, and as part of our class on managing and designing plant collections we popped over on the Dunoon ferry west of Glasgow for a couple days. Benmore is the wettest of the RBGE gardens, with more than three metres of rain each year, and the garden spreads up a steep mountain slope. The weather, topography, and sheer size of the trees (e.g., Sequoiadendron giganteum, or Giant Sequoia; and Pseudotsuga menziesii, Douglas Fir) in this collection make gardening there especially challenging, necessitating heavy machinery and skilled arborists.

The garden had a taxonomic layout until 1980s, when geographic areas were developed beginning with the Tasmanian Ridge, followed by the Bhutanese Garden, Chilean, and Japanese sections.

The garden is known for its fine collection of Rhododendron sp., and Magnolia sp., but in autumn the brilliantly colored Acer sp. steal the show.

The fernery, nestled into a gorge above a stream and grotto, was built in the 1870s by James Duncan, then owner of the estate. After Duncan's bankruptcy and sale of the estate, the fernery lay in disrepair until 2008, when it was sympathetically restored and reopened the next year. More information on the fernery and restoration is here. 

The combination of original stone gable ends and modern steel and glass roof is compelling and one of the nicest updates of a historical structure that I've seen. 

The Enkianthus campanulatus were a new discovery and stunning. 

 I like this photo because it's a pretty honest representation of what studying horticulture in Scotland is like: walking around an absolutely magical landscape...in the pouring rain. 

You'll get no complaints from me as the day it chucked down rain at Benmore the quality of light and fog on the mountainside made for some pretty good picture taking. And of course, all that rain makes for some of the lushest mosses I've ever seen. 

Finally, a little close-up of a lovely new-to-me tree, and one that's been a favorite through-line of several garden visits this autumn: the white-flowered Eucryphia. 

Samphire planet

Earlier this summer I wandered off Tyninghame Beach and found myself on another planet. A totally normal-looking beach gradually gave way to sticky mud flats dotted with stringy green algae. A few more steps in and strange green sticks grew straight from the mud. Soon I found myself surrounded by a completely unexpected and bizarrely delightful colony of marsh samphire, Salicornia europaea.

You may know samphire as a crunchy, salty vegetable often served with fish dishes. But samphire is also called glasswort, not because it glows like stained glass in the sun, which it does, but because when burned, ashes from the plant become soda ash, used for making glass.

I'd never seen samphire growing in the wild, and on this surreal mudflat in the setting sun it was spectacularly beautiful. As well as crunchy and salty and delicious.