What a winter we have all had this year! It has been quite a shock, the severity of the frosts that we have had here. Just before Christmas I was talking about how early some of the first Rhodo's were this season, well they certainly got put on hold, but they are looking good again now!
In the lower part of the walled garden, which is the area where the snow always hangs around longest, the temperature certainly got as low as minus 5 degrees maybe lower! It has been a bit of a disappointment as we have lost a few plants that we were quit attached to, the most upsetting being the Echium candicans, they look stone dead to me at the moment. However it does seem that the Echium pininana have survived.
Surprisingly my favourite succulent, the purple Aeonium, that lives in a terracotta pot in a recess in the south facing buttress wall does seen to be alive still!
Much of our time, so far this year, has been spent working with Hydrangeas mostly pruning old overgrown areas. I know that really it's a bit too early yet but when you are doing restorative work, rather than annual maintenance, the timing is not as important, as if you do it when you have the most time.
As well as pruning we have done a bit of thinning out, many of the plants just love the conditions here so much - the acidity and the high rainfall! They sucker a lot, so I had to get in and remove a few as it was like a thicket. In the summer when they were in flower I went through and named them all, so we'll be able to sort out the colours into better blocks using the spares to replant elsewhere in a new bed.
At this point I just like to remember the quote in Ken Cox's recent book 'Gardens in Scotland' that the Hydrangeas at Torosay are the bluest that he has ever seen !
I cant wait till they start to flower again!
Monday, 8 February 2010
Monday, 14 December 2009
Making the most of the weather
The Christmas craft fair went very well and we sold most of the forced Hyacinths and Paperwhite Narcissii, as many as we wanted to anyway, as the idea was to save enough to brighten up the castle over the festive season. I did enjoy meeting lots of the visitors as I had not seen very many in the garden for quite a few weeks now. It did remind me of my many years in retail talking and selling plants to the puplic on garden cetres. I am pleased that I didnt have to sell xmas trees though, as that could be a bit tricky at times especially if husband and wife came together as well as salesman often I ended up being a marriage guidance councillor aswell.
Wandering around the garden a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the first of our early flowering Rhodo's was breaking out from bud for us the first one is usually Nobleanum closely followed by Christmas Cheer. My first thoughts were my goodness it does'nt seem like a year ago when they were flowering last. After a few minutes of thought on the matter I realised that perhaps time is not on quite the hyperbole as I had imagined last year these two rhodo's did not start to flower until early February so it was only ten months ago. It's not so rare for them to flower this early in the southern counties but it did suprise me up here. It does also show how the seasons can vary.
Work in the garden at the moment is mainly of a maintainance and construction nature unfortunately sometimes one of these can end up leading on to the other. Old tree stumps can be a real eye sore as well as being a bit of potential source of infection of plant diseases. Whilst digging out and then removing a few the other day I ended up having to dismantle a bridge. The bridge was due for some repairs anyway but I did'nt plan on having to do it right now, it was'nt exactly what I wanted to do in my last week leading up to Christmas. As this is most likely to be my last posting before the break have a jolly good one.
Wandering around the garden a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the first of our early flowering Rhodo's was breaking out from bud for us the first one is usually Nobleanum closely followed by Christmas Cheer. My first thoughts were my goodness it does'nt seem like a year ago when they were flowering last. After a few minutes of thought on the matter I realised that perhaps time is not on quite the hyperbole as I had imagined last year these two rhodo's did not start to flower until early February so it was only ten months ago. It's not so rare for them to flower this early in the southern counties but it did suprise me up here. It does also show how the seasons can vary.
Work in the garden at the moment is mainly of a maintainance and construction nature unfortunately sometimes one of these can end up leading on to the other. Old tree stumps can be a real eye sore as well as being a bit of potential source of infection of plant diseases. Whilst digging out and then removing a few the other day I ended up having to dismantle a bridge. The bridge was due for some repairs anyway but I did'nt plan on having to do it right now, it was'nt exactly what I wanted to do in my last week leading up to Christmas. As this is most likely to be my last posting before the break have a jolly good one.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Bulb potting
One of the most exciting jobs in the autumn is planting and potting the new seasons bulbs, but it is one of those jobs that you have to resist doing immediately if the weather is dry needs must and you have to go out and do jobs like leaf raking. So we wait for it to rain I prefer to pot most of my bulbs as I use a lot of them in containers for their first season then having had a good look at them I can then decide where to put them in the garden borders for future displays.
This year I have been asked to force a large batch of Hyacinths for our Christmas craft fair on December 5th and 6th. So we made sure we got our order in very early to get the bulbs in for the first week of September. The potted bulbs were put in the dark for about 6 weeks, then brought up onto the benches to develop the flower shoots its been a bit touch and go and I did put some of them back outside to hold them back a bit however I think they are going to be okay.
There was more excitement a few days ago when the terracotta bowls arrived to pot the hyacinths on into. As the bowls on their own was a fairly small order I was able to get hold of some new large planters for summer displays next year and also some very elegant pots for the herbs that we keep on the tea room terrace. 3 bulbs of a single colour went into each bowl. Now all the Hyacinths need is to be dressed with a topping of moss, then its about three weeks in a well lit room not too close to any radiators and they should be in flower for the festive season.
If you get a chance to come along to the fair it would be great to see a few of you out in the garden weather permitting of course.
This year I have been asked to force a large batch of Hyacinths for our Christmas craft fair on December 5th and 6th. So we made sure we got our order in very early to get the bulbs in for the first week of September. The potted bulbs were put in the dark for about 6 weeks, then brought up onto the benches to develop the flower shoots its been a bit touch and go and I did put some of them back outside to hold them back a bit however I think they are going to be okay.
There was more excitement a few days ago when the terracotta bowls arrived to pot the hyacinths on into. As the bowls on their own was a fairly small order I was able to get hold of some new large planters for summer displays next year and also some very elegant pots for the herbs that we keep on the tea room terrace. 3 bulbs of a single colour went into each bowl. Now all the Hyacinths need is to be dressed with a topping of moss, then its about three weeks in a well lit room not too close to any radiators and they should be in flower for the festive season.
If you get a chance to come along to the fair it would be great to see a few of you out in the garden weather permitting of course.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Winter Approaches at Torosay
It was very satisfying last week to be able to get in what will probably be the final mowing of the lawns for the season. We were also able to give some of the lawns a scarifying, I don't think this had been done on the walled garden for many a year.After two passes we had taken off more thatch than we have in green mowing's all season and the bad news was that it all had to be raked up by hand.
Eventually after allowing a whole growing season as a stale seedbed for weeds to come and then be dispatched, we have now started to plant the beds that we built around the entrance area last winter. It has been quite a tricky area to plan as it cannot be protected from rabbits or deer, some of the things that we are trying are foxgloves, Hellebores, Euphorbias, Bergenia and Geranium macrorrhizum. We are trying a few shrubs as well Rhodo's and Escallonia, it seems that the smellier or aromatic the foliage the less they like it, I'll keep you posted! One thing that I know from experience is that tough leaves and prickles don't work I've seen Hollies Berberis and Roses all devastated by deer.
Planting has also been started in the Primeval Dell including tree ferns (acquired from Logan Botanic Gardens) Cycads, Wollemi Pine, Woodwardia fern and our own bog oak tree discovered on the estate, planted vertically it looks quite spooky almost black with a very rough surface. Planting in this area will be ongoing as and when we acquire more ancient plants.
We have also managed to do some planting in the very far corner of the garden known as Roberts Corner. This is an area that was rescued from wild raspberries and a very aggressive colony of wasps last summer, it did contain a few hybrid Rhododendrons that have improved immensely in the last year since they have been unshackled and by the look of their heavy budding should flower profusely next spring. It seemed appropriate that we should marry them up with some of the many species and hybrid deciduous Azaleas that have been sitting around in the nursery area for the last 18 months.
Still lots to look forward to we start autumn leaf sweeping next week...
Any volunteers ?
Eventually after allowing a whole growing season as a stale seedbed for weeds to come and then be dispatched, we have now started to plant the beds that we built around the entrance area last winter. It has been quite a tricky area to plan as it cannot be protected from rabbits or deer, some of the things that we are trying are foxgloves, Hellebores, Euphorbias, Bergenia and Geranium macrorrhizum. We are trying a few shrubs as well Rhodo's and Escallonia, it seems that the smellier or aromatic the foliage the less they like it, I'll keep you posted! One thing that I know from experience is that tough leaves and prickles don't work I've seen Hollies Berberis and Roses all devastated by deer.
Planting has also been started in the Primeval Dell including tree ferns (acquired from Logan Botanic Gardens) Cycads, Wollemi Pine, Woodwardia fern and our own bog oak tree discovered on the estate, planted vertically it looks quite spooky almost black with a very rough surface. Planting in this area will be ongoing as and when we acquire more ancient plants.
We have also managed to do some planting in the very far corner of the garden known as Roberts Corner. This is an area that was rescued from wild raspberries and a very aggressive colony of wasps last summer, it did contain a few hybrid Rhododendrons that have improved immensely in the last year since they have been unshackled and by the look of their heavy budding should flower profusely next spring. It seemed appropriate that we should marry them up with some of the many species and hybrid deciduous Azaleas that have been sitting around in the nursery area for the last 18 months.
Still lots to look forward to we start autumn leaf sweeping next week...
Any volunteers ?
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Autumn Blues
The autumn blues that I refer to here are not the sad ones that start to happen now that the days are starting to get shorter, more the excellent blues of our Hydrangeas. Probably the most spectacular one that we have here is one of the Teller hybrids from Germany called Blaumeise it's a lacecap with very large flowers which are an almost luminous blue particularly when they brighten up a shady glade.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
What a summer
I hope that you may have noticed that our Saltire managed to get onto the front page of the BBC Scotland News website a few weeks back now and it looked very impressive too with a very good photograph put in by our snapper Phil McDermott.
What I now have to admit is that it is no longer there, well not in its original format. Unfortunately the Delta Pansies just proved to be a bit to disease prone for our moist climate here on Mull, I had been aware that this might be the case. So I had ordered a batch of 1400 Viola's as an insurance policy I got these in as small plugs and grew them on as quickly as possible. We did the swap towards the end of June and I'm pleased to say they are performing much better than the Pansies and no need to dead head not even the white ones.
Since my last report the vast majority of our time has been spent weeding and mowing etc, but we have been doing some progressive jobs as well. Last week we spent several days having another blitz on the Colonnades, as I wander over there I have on more than one occasion caught couples having a smooch in the rotunda at the end, so we have decided to theme the Colonnades as our romantic garden, so lots of colour lots of nice smells including plants like Roses and Lillie's.
The Colonnades has been built on the site of the original Peach house and is probably the sunniest and most sheltered spot in the whole garden. The heat reflecting rendered back wall is still mostly there along with some of the old rusting plant supports and the cast iron grid path. With the 14 pink marble pillars that support the overhead pergola (Don't even know where these originated they look Roman) we really do have an unique feature with a classical distressed appearance.
Another area we have recently done a bit of restoration work on is at the near end of our large pond. Two particular plants in this part of the garden had got well out of control. Firstly there was a huge Rhododendron that had started to cover over the inlet from the feeding Burn making that part very dark and dull and hiding a bit too much view
Secondly next to the Rhodo is a very large area of Thuya plicata this had been poorly pruned in recent years and older low foliage had become a bit unsightly. what lay behind this was another of our very old spreading families of Thuya originally probably 100 years ago, or even more one plant had been put in, this will have developed into a good strong specimen with some long downward swooping limbs which in time would root down and form a new tree a process which then will continue to happen until you have a family of several generations of Thuya covering a very large area.
We actually have several of these families around the gardens one is called Elephants trunk because that's what some of the large limbs look like. Our newly opened up area has been called the Octopus tree as it has lots of long sweeping branches some are quite twisted as well looking like tentacles. The fun bit is trying to work which tree is the original mother or grandmother.
I usually like to talk about at least one type of plant that is currently looking good in the garden this time it has to be Eucryphia of which we are developing quite a good collection, right now the lucida forms are in flower. The best pink flowered form is Ballerina with large pale pink flowers with a darker edge we also have a largish Pink Cloud its a good specimen, but the flowers are smaller. Possibly my favourite though is the very rare variegated White Cloud lovely flowers with the usual pronounced stamens. The other species will be following along shortly including our 30 foot high cordifolia, a good species as it is fairly lime tolerant and the other contender in my favourites list is the very tender moorei this makes a lovely small tree with evergreen foliage that looks like a Rowan. The flowers are small and white but masses of them I really can wait to see it probably in about a fortnight
What I now have to admit is that it is no longer there, well not in its original format. Unfortunately the Delta Pansies just proved to be a bit to disease prone for our moist climate here on Mull, I had been aware that this might be the case. So I had ordered a batch of 1400 Viola's as an insurance policy I got these in as small plugs and grew them on as quickly as possible. We did the swap towards the end of June and I'm pleased to say they are performing much better than the Pansies and no need to dead head not even the white ones.
Since my last report the vast majority of our time has been spent weeding and mowing etc, but we have been doing some progressive jobs as well. Last week we spent several days having another blitz on the Colonnades, as I wander over there I have on more than one occasion caught couples having a smooch in the rotunda at the end, so we have decided to theme the Colonnades as our romantic garden, so lots of colour lots of nice smells including plants like Roses and Lillie's.
The Colonnades has been built on the site of the original Peach house and is probably the sunniest and most sheltered spot in the whole garden. The heat reflecting rendered back wall is still mostly there along with some of the old rusting plant supports and the cast iron grid path. With the 14 pink marble pillars that support the overhead pergola (Don't even know where these originated they look Roman) we really do have an unique feature with a classical distressed appearance.
Another area we have recently done a bit of restoration work on is at the near end of our large pond. Two particular plants in this part of the garden had got well out of control. Firstly there was a huge Rhododendron that had started to cover over the inlet from the feeding Burn making that part very dark and dull and hiding a bit too much view
Secondly next to the Rhodo is a very large area of Thuya plicata this had been poorly pruned in recent years and older low foliage had become a bit unsightly. what lay behind this was another of our very old spreading families of Thuya originally probably 100 years ago, or even more one plant had been put in, this will have developed into a good strong specimen with some long downward swooping limbs which in time would root down and form a new tree a process which then will continue to happen until you have a family of several generations of Thuya covering a very large area.
We actually have several of these families around the gardens one is called Elephants trunk because that's what some of the large limbs look like. Our newly opened up area has been called the Octopus tree as it has lots of long sweeping branches some are quite twisted as well looking like tentacles. The fun bit is trying to work which tree is the original mother or grandmother.
I usually like to talk about at least one type of plant that is currently looking good in the garden this time it has to be Eucryphia of which we are developing quite a good collection, right now the lucida forms are in flower. The best pink flowered form is Ballerina with large pale pink flowers with a darker edge we also have a largish Pink Cloud its a good specimen, but the flowers are smaller. Possibly my favourite though is the very rare variegated White Cloud lovely flowers with the usual pronounced stamens. The other species will be following along shortly including our 30 foot high cordifolia, a good species as it is fairly lime tolerant and the other contender in my favourites list is the very tender moorei this makes a lovely small tree with evergreen foliage that looks like a Rowan. The flowers are small and white but masses of them I really can wait to see it probably in about a fortnight
Thursday, 4 June 2009
Hay fever
The saltire is starting to fill out now that we are having some warm weather, some things are growing incredibly fast, like the salad leaves planted in the tunnel. A couple of days ago I was asked to find a few leaves for the cafe because they had run out, it was a bit of a struggle, since then they seem to have doubled in size.
Lots of plants are now doing there thing Embothrium coccineum looks stunning in the bright sun, our magnificent Cornus capitata probably the largest in the UK is starting to show its sulphur yellow flowers. My favourite plant at the moment just has to be the Echium wildpretti we have two flowering on our rock garden in frount of the Gardeners cottage. One of them spent the whole winter out there, the other one was planted out a few weeks ago when it showed that it was going to produce a flower spike. The inflorescence on both are about 1 metre in height a dusky deep pink spike made up of hundreds of small borage type flowers in amongst the other mediteranian type plants from all around the world they look quite breathtaking. Its good fun mixing up these plants like Puya from Chile, Osteospermums from South Africa and Phormium from New Zealand they would never be seen together naturally but they do look good next to each other.
The weather pattern this year has been a bit different from last, May was much better last year which has had the effect of putting us back a bit on putting out our bedding displays. We have made a start by building on the Italianate theme near the house the Tea room terrace bed behind the ballustrading has had a makeover 5 standard Olives have been underplanted with the new hardy Gerbera Pink Everlast the sivery Pink of the Gerbera looks stunning with the Olives.
Some of the plants being used for bedding this year are fairly new, last year we were very succesful with Nemesia so I have got three great colours for this season Peach, Kumquat (orange)and Cassis (Blackcurant). Last years Nemesia suvived overwinter outside. We are also using a new Erysimum (Wallflower) which has two coloured flowers on the same cluster some mauve and some pale Yellow it's called Plant World Lemon When the Tulips die down a bit more we might be able to plant them.
Another plant we are trying at Torosay for the first time this year is an unusual type of Ipomea batatas which is actually closely related to the sweet potato. Its a foliage plant that spreads and is good for baskets and containers I fist came across this little gem a few years ago as the purple leaved form Sweet Caroline. Since then some new forms have appeared we are trying a bronze leaved type. It has fairly large hand shaped leaves like a Castor oil plant what we have to sort out is what does it go well with and does it like Scotland? only time will tell.
Having got carried away with this blog it is nearly half past ten here on Mull, time to turn in for the night, doesn't feel quite right as its still broad daylight outside!.
Lots of plants are now doing there thing Embothrium coccineum looks stunning in the bright sun, our magnificent Cornus capitata probably the largest in the UK is starting to show its sulphur yellow flowers. My favourite plant at the moment just has to be the Echium wildpretti we have two flowering on our rock garden in frount of the Gardeners cottage. One of them spent the whole winter out there, the other one was planted out a few weeks ago when it showed that it was going to produce a flower spike. The inflorescence on both are about 1 metre in height a dusky deep pink spike made up of hundreds of small borage type flowers in amongst the other mediteranian type plants from all around the world they look quite breathtaking. Its good fun mixing up these plants like Puya from Chile, Osteospermums from South Africa and Phormium from New Zealand they would never be seen together naturally but they do look good next to each other.
The weather pattern this year has been a bit different from last, May was much better last year which has had the effect of putting us back a bit on putting out our bedding displays. We have made a start by building on the Italianate theme near the house the Tea room terrace bed behind the ballustrading has had a makeover 5 standard Olives have been underplanted with the new hardy Gerbera Pink Everlast the sivery Pink of the Gerbera looks stunning with the Olives.
Some of the plants being used for bedding this year are fairly new, last year we were very succesful with Nemesia so I have got three great colours for this season Peach, Kumquat (orange)and Cassis (Blackcurant). Last years Nemesia suvived overwinter outside. We are also using a new Erysimum (Wallflower) which has two coloured flowers on the same cluster some mauve and some pale Yellow it's called Plant World Lemon When the Tulips die down a bit more we might be able to plant them.
Another plant we are trying at Torosay for the first time this year is an unusual type of Ipomea batatas which is actually closely related to the sweet potato. Its a foliage plant that spreads and is good for baskets and containers I fist came across this little gem a few years ago as the purple leaved form Sweet Caroline. Since then some new forms have appeared we are trying a bronze leaved type. It has fairly large hand shaped leaves like a Castor oil plant what we have to sort out is what does it go well with and does it like Scotland? only time will tell.
Having got carried away with this blog it is nearly half past ten here on Mull, time to turn in for the night, doesn't feel quite right as its still broad daylight outside!.
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