First impressions

The quiet months of winter give us an opportunity to improve the facilities of the gardens. Whilst there's not too many people in the car park we have been able to do some work on the entrance area to improve visitors first impressions.

We are very fortunate to have a lot of natural resources available to us - mainly a lot of building stone lying around - so we have raised the walls on either side of our entrance path to make some raised beds. To improve the quality of the soil in these beds we have added compost from our own green waste mixed in together with seaweed collected from the beach. So in the future we will be able to create a more memorable first impression with welcoming floral displays. We are hoping to start planting during the summer.

It has been great fun building these walls, it's a good stress reliever. Apparently Winston Churchill used to build walls as a form of relaxation. It wasn't quite so nice filling the beds with the compost, especially when it's pouring down with rain and your wellies get stuck in the mud!

January in the garden

It has always been a tradition at Torosay to go around the gardens and make a list of all the plants that are flowering on the first of the month. This is probably not a unique idea and I know for certain it was done by a certain Mr Dorrien-Smith, at Tresco Abbey gardens Isles of Scilley, over a hundred years ago. We have had some sub zero temperatures here and a relatively cold dry winter but even so there are a number of interesting subjects braving the weather...

• Latua pubiflora
• Hamamellis mollis
• Prunus subhirtella Autumnalis
• Rhododendron praecox
  
• Rhododendron nobelianum
• Lapageria rosea
• Mahonia japonica
• Daphne bholua

So far it does also seem that the Aeonium canariensis Zwartskopft that we always leave outside in containers in the receeses of the buttressed wall on the Lion terrace have survived the frost but its still early to be sure.