Nymans (excellent garden, woodland being worked on)
Bodnant (best of all)
Windsor Great Park. (some concerns about the condition of the species collection, valley Gardens)
Borde Hill (disappointing, poor, no signage, labels, too much shade)
Wakehurst top part excellent, valley over crowded, over shaded. Needs action.
Sheffield Park some problems with Phytophthora but landscape excellent
Exbury in very good shape. Not enough visitors. Should be better marketed.
Mount Stewart, NI Most exciting garden restoration.
Ramster best private woodland garden in S.E. England that I have seen. Excellent.
June 2015
Raoul Curtis Machin, now head of horticulture at the HTA and I were at Ingleston as guests of the Caley stand, to launch the end edition of our book Scotland for Gardeners. it was great to hear so much positive feedback on my 3 Scotland Gardening books and we sold plenty copies of the new edition. Gardening Scotland seemed busy on the Friday and Saturday with better weather forecast. In the event there was a spectacular hail storm on Saturday afternoon with bruising horizontal stones for 10 minutes.
Show Highlights. The Dibleys 'best in show' displays, the Love the Plot you've got gardens and Binny Plants perennials display which was right beside our stand. Gardening Scotland is a great day out but it needs a bit more imagination to get people to come every year. It just seems to lack 'must see' displays. I did not catch the Beechgrove coverage, so I dont know what they focussed on thies year.
new Initiative Discover Scotland's gardens was launched. I wish them well
http://discoverscottishgardens.org for more details.
St Andrews and Dundee Botanic Gardens have both been fighting for funding in recent years and both appear to be on a better footing with new funding initiatives.
I met the key people from both gardens at the Scottish Parliament last week: Alisdair Hood and James Hearsum.
St Andrews Botanical garden news:
'The first day of January 2015 marked an important milestone for St Andrew Botanic Garden. The St Andrews Botanic Garden Trust formally took over the management of the Garden on behalf of Fife Council. The Council will continue to have an involvement in the Garden up to the final handover on 1 April 2015. Dr Jean Stewart, Chairman of the Board, welcomed this development saying, “This is a very important stage in the further development of the Garden and follows a lot of hard work by many people over several years. We look forward to signing the lease with the landowners, the University of St Andrews, in the next few weeks and to the full handover from Fife Council at the end of March. We are very grateful for all the support we have received, from many individuals and particularly from Fife Council. There is still a lot to do but this is a very exciting time for all those involved”.
Board members include representatives from Fife Council and the Friends of the Botanic Garden as well as independent members. James Hearsum, formerly of the Royal Botanic Garden, Jordan, was appointed as Director of the Garden in May last year and has been working hard with Board members to achieve the handover. James commented “I feel very privileged to be part of this wonderful garden and look forward to further developing the facilities to encourage more members of the public to use and enjoy the garden”. Funding for the Garden will be sought from a variety of sources, both for the ongoing activities and for capital projects. The Garden already has an extensive and highly respected education programme both for schoolchildren and adults. This will be developed further and the Board is exploring ways it can work with the local community to encourage greater public use of this asset so close to the heart of St Andrews.
James used social media to attact several thousand visitors in April and May and the university is looking anew at how it might help fund the garden.
It was with some trepidation that I set out to visit most of the new gardens and nurseries for inclusion in the 2014 edition of Scotland for Gardeners. Will I find any hidden gems and big surprises. In the end the answer was very much YES!. Lots of great new gardens to add: Steadstone, Crinan, Shambellie Walled Garden, Arndean, Briglands, Glassmount, Jo Swift, Jupiter Artland, Humbie Dean and many gardens in Shetland.. and lots more. Either Ray or I and often both of us have been to see the gardens: Ray to Shetland, myself to Orkney, Ray to the south east, myself to the soutwest... and on it goes.
At least we have a summer. In fact after the very late start, it has been an outstanding year for gardens: rhododendrons and azaleas the best ever and went on and on. Roses are amazing this year; last year they just rotted away. What a difference some sun makes. Only the high altitude and moisture loving alpines are suffering. They dont like it when it reaches 30 degrees. Now we need a few days of rain to sort out the parched soil. We are always complaining... we gardeners. But then again 6.30am to 10pm watering is quite a lot of a day!
May 2013 saw Glendoick celebrate its 60th anniversary with a day where former and retired staff were invited back for a reunion and tour of the gardens. The sun shone and my father Peter Cox who was not in the best of health managed to come out to meet everyone.
September 2012 Scotland's Gardens Crises and Closures
It is inevitable with any guidebook (Scotland for Gardeners) that it slowly goes out of date. I've just signed up to do a new edition to come out in 2014. Perhaps in the current economic climate is is inevitable that more gardens will close/be sold, disappear off the map. Occasionally the news is good. Take magnificent Kinross House, for example, bought from the Montgomery family by a new owner who is investing millions in the house, grounds and garden. The walled garden, part of William Bruce's planned landscape, with views via the fish gate to the castle on Loch Leven where Mary Queen of Scotts was imprisioned, is being refashioned following Bruce's original plans. I have been busy designing borders and plantings in the wider landscape. The new owner intends to reopen the garden in the future. We could not have hoped for a better outcome.
There are over 120 new gardens to consider for inclusion in the new edition. I look forward to another summer of garden visits.
But significant gardens are disappearing: In the last 3 years Jura House and Torosay Castle (Mull) have been sold. Jura House was apparently sold to a hedge fund manager who did not bother to visit what he's bought for months. As one of the few tourist attractions on Jura, this is of course of great local sigificance. Likewise, Torosay castle was sold off, after all its historical artifacts were sold off by a major auction house. So there goes one of Mull's two principal tourist attractions. What will be the long term consequence of this? 20-30 years before, these two might have been taken on by the National Trust for Scotand. Torosay for example held a unique connection of Italian garden scupture. But the NTS cannot afford to take on any more properties, unless they come with multimillion pound endowments.
Gardens are so intrinsically bound up with their owners that when they grow old/die/move on I am not under any illusion that they should be preserved or conserved in any way. And in the exceptional cases when they can be because the person to carrry on is there in place: Fergus Garret at Great Dixtor for example, then the results can be wonderful. So lets just take pleasure in the memories of Scotland's gardens which are no longer open: Carestown Steading, Suntrap, Myers Castle, Arnot Tower, Kerracher.... Other gardens are given the potential for survival into the future. Which brings us to the thorny problem of:
The National Trust for Scotland, despite the Reid report, seems no closer to resolving its long term cash/flow income issues which led to the threatened closure of many of its gardens. For several years I was on the gardens advistory panel which was suddenly suspended/disbanded along with the other NTS advisory panels in 2011. The NTS Gardens department fought for its retention, arguing that it cost so little to run (£500 per year) and gave NTS some of Scotland's best gardening, forestry and horticultural brains to supply what amounted to free expert consultancy. The NTS management has still not reversed the decision and the situation is left in limbo. If ever there was a time that this group of experts were needed....
Of course, the sensible thing to do would have been to retain the panel while its role was redefined. In May 2012 a panel meeting was scheduled to take place at Arduaine Gardens where Phythopthora ramorum infection in Japanese Larch was threatening the future of the garden. A strategic plan for timber extraction without irreversible damage to the plant collection below was being drawn up. For the last 40 years, this is exactly the sort of issue that the panel would and should have been called to help with. 10 days before this meeting, it was vetoed by the NTS management for 'proceedural reasons'. Which they considered to be of more importance than the future of this historic garden. The meeting has never taken place. I'm afraid that this was the last straw for me and I resigned from what was left of the panel. Sadly George Reid has moved on and the NTS is still trying to sort itself out. We have only seen the beginning of the NTS crisis I'm sure of this. They still have far too many properties some of which are not worth conserving, and are simply there because they came with large legacies attached. Many of the key properties with the most conservation value come with little or no endowments. The long term picture is disasterous. Scotland's heritage is a priceless asset being run like a volunteer thriftshop. it cant go on.
The NTS is currently assessing the portfolio of the trust, evaluating the conservation priorities and the finances for the next 10-20 years which it must do to make the difficult but essential decisions to streamline's its operations. Geilston, Inveresk Lodge and other properties of less than national significance need to be cut from the Portfolio. Lots of blood will be shed, but unless it is done now, we wont have a heritage portfolio going forward.
As George Reid so notably said. 'NTS is like an ocean liner where the caption and crew are deciding what colour the deckchairs should be while nobody bothed to check if there was any fuel for the engines.'
May 9th 2012
The last few months of a book writing project are pure tedium, reading through your own waffle endlessly trying to find any last minute errors, checking captions, getting line drawings done.... but at last the book is out. I'm slightly worried about the whtie cover for a book that might get mucky in the potting shed but it looks great. We just need to sit back and hope that it sells.
May 2nd 2012 Meanwhile I have just had a wonderful tour of the Valley and Savill gardens near Windsor from Mark Flanagan. This amazing royal estate/park/forest between Windsor Castle and Virginia Water contains two major gardens begin by Eric Savill in the 1950s and overseen by John Bond and now Mark Flanagan. This is the best large scale woodland garden in the country, and unlike most of them, this one was planned right from the start: the best sites were selected for vistas down to the lake and to distant obilisks and hill tops. The planting was and is on a vast scale, you can walk miles through conifers, rhododendrons, magnolias, perennials, a New Zealand garden and the famous punchbowl of Kurume azaleas introduced from Japan by Ernest Wilson just after 1900. What is the secret of this great garden:
1. Continuity. The management under the men listed above has been consistent and always looking forward as well as back. Never afraid to fell, thin, chainsaw and move things, they all realised that gardening is a process and that stewardship means active decision making. Sometimes the National Trust need to be shown the way by practices at Windsor.
2. The gardens are a mixture of great design and a 1st class plant collection. Too often one subhumes the other. Not at Windsor: the two exist happiily side by side.
3. Something for everyone: the new visitor centre is one of the best buildings opened in the UK for the last 10 years. Modern, yet appropriate to the setting, memorable but light, airy, functional. Worth going to see this alone.
Cragside in Northumberland has some of the densest R. ponticum thickets I have ever seen. This is place where Tsuga and Salal from North America andR. ponticum have gone riot as a threesome, to the near exclusion of everything else. it is a amazing that this high altitude cold hilltop site has been so favourable to these 3 plants. The thickets are now being exploited for flower arranging. I reckon there in enough there to supply every florist in the world. More details in Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/plants/8930502/The-rhododendrons-road-to-redemption.html
At last our new book Fruit and Vegetables for Scotland is finished and away to the publishers. As every author know, this is by no means the end as editing, checking, captions, indexing and marketing all need to happen still. But the weight of the manuscript is away and I have more time for blogging...
Next week I'm off to Fan Si Pan in Northern Vietnam. About 15 years ago Keith Rushforth, Tom Hudson and others discovered a whole range of new species on Vietnam's highest mountain. A little over 3000m in height, we assumed that this material would not be very hardy. And as most had no name, we did not bother growing much of it. Last April I went to see the material at Tom Hudson's garden Tregahan in Cornwall. All had come through the big freeze unscathed where other rhododendrons were damaged. This inspired me to arrange to go back and collect this material again, this time with names and let everyone know that this is interesting and hardy material.
Now most of the species are named. These include R. rushforthii, R. osii, R. sinofalconeri, R. fansipanensis, R. tanystylum var. vietnamense which Keith Rushforth says has the best truss of any species he has seen and the new big leaf Rhododendron suoilenhensis . I have not been plant hunting since my knees packed in in Arunachal Pradesh in 2005. I have been training and I hope I'm still up to it!
Back from a great trip. Lucky with the weather and guided by Uoc who has also taken Bledwyn and Sue Win Jones and Dan Hinckley amongst others up Fan Si Pan. We found all the rhododendrons, good Magnolias, Viburnum in fruit, Lilium and lots more. Sapa is a very cold place, so if you do go there in winter take lots of warm clothes. It was warmer higher up in the mountains away from the freezing fog.
Once the plant hunting was done I met up with my family in Hanoi and we spent 3 weeks exploring the country from Halong Bay south to Phu Quoc an island off the coast of Cambodia. A great country and an excellent holiday.
My first ever visit to this show on a scorching Monday, armed with a press pass. What a pleasure to be able to visit a show in perfect condition without the crowds. Apart from the huge bands of marauding school children, it was easy to see everything and to talk to the designers and nurseryman. First stop was the Plant Heritage tent where I soon spotted Tom Hart Dyke. I was interested to hear how the winter had been for his extensive collection of southern hemisphere flora in Kent. I recall from earlier
freezes how cold it can get in this part of the southeast and sure enough many of his beloved Eucalyptus had perished. But of course those which have survived have proved themselves as tough and these included some of Tom's own collections from Victoria and Tasmania. Moving around the show gardens, tends this year seemed to be Laura Ashley-coloured painted walls and wood, Echinaceas and potager plantings.
I bumped into David Bellamy working on the stand of juice supplier promoting English apple varieties. I wanted to ask him what his thoughts on the peat debate were. He after all was responsible for the use of peat in gardens to be questioned in the first place. His concern was to conserve the few remaining low lying English peat bogs. And he succeeded in doing this during the 1980s. David is utterly dismayed with the way this debate has now turned into a proposal to outlaw peat use. He does not accept any of the arguments put forward by environmentalists and clearly his views are not ‘politically correct' so are no longer appearing in the media. Which is a great shame. Check out David's website http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/
The great and the good were sweltering in the dining hall of the giant two tier catering tent so I knew this would be a good place to meet people once lunch was over. Sure enough I soon spotted Roy and Sue Lancaster who were heading to the same RHS conference I was the following day. Indeed Roy explained to me that my bedroom on Tuesday night was his on Wednesday at the home of RHS director Jim Gardiner. Roy demanded that I keep ‘his room' in good order.
I also bumped into journalist Steven Anderton and former editor of The Garden Ian Hodgson looking for things to write about. The reason I'd come to the show was to research by forthcoming book Fruit and Vegetables for Scotland so I headed to the Grow your Own tent and spoke to several nurseries there including the Brogdale commercial fruit nursery now propagating fruit for sale from the National Fruit Collection. I was very taken by Rebekah's Vegetable Seed displays of salad bowls of cut and come again crops and a wonderful range of very cheap seeds. I bought several packets of items I'd been looking for, such as Bulls Blood beet ‘Red Devil'.http://www.rebekahsveg.talktalk.net/. The vegetable garden created for the show was the highlight of this year's Hampton Court. Olives and lavender and a herb parterre both perfect. What a shame it all had to be ripped up.
Wednesday morning I headed off to RHS Wisley for the International Trials Conference where I was proposing the RHS revised hardiness ratings debating against Marco Hoffman from Holland who was promoting the USDA ratings. Delegates from all over the world were there including larger than life Dan Heims of Terra Nova in Oregon, breeder of Heucheras and related plants. He was also staying at Jim Gardiner's and later got out his blues harp...Anyway back to the event, this was designed to look at the way plants are trialled and evaluated in all parts of the world. Fergus Garret, from Great Dixter, member of the trials committee at Wisley, gave a passionate speech on the benefits of trialling in evaluating good plants. Of course when trials are done at Wisley, it means that not all plants perform as they might further north or west and it is good to see Harlow Carr doing plants more suited to cooler climates: Meconopsis for example. My role was to promote the new proposed RHS hardiness ratings based on average winter minimums and a concept of robustness: will a plant thrive in a given climate. Live its normal lifespan. It looks as if at long last, something I've been advocating for years is coming to fruition. I do see how useful it would be to have a worldwide rating but the UK's maritime and northern climate means that the same sort of minimum temperature ratings are largely worthless. And that plants would have to have new and different USDA ratings for the UK. Which would be a recipe for chaos.
Ever the maverick, John Ravenscroft, former owner of Bridgemere was giving me a hard time in the questions after the debate but I was happy with my presentation and I think the RHS position was well put. I hope so anyway. John and his wife Liz came to dinner at the Gardiners afterwards and it was great to catch up with him after many years and to laugh about some of the excesses and successes at Bridgemere. John pointed out to me in discussing peat alternatives, that bark is a very risky substance these days due to Phythopthora ramorum on Larix kaempferi being felled all over the UK. Can we assume that all infected larch is burned in situ? I very much doubt it. I'd certainly check any bark suppliers for source of trees and insist on spruce and pine bark alone. Wisley is without doubt the highest concentration of horticultural excellence in the UK and maybe in the world. So many exceptional parts: the trials, the herbaceous plantings, the fruit collection, the grass borders, you cant fail to be impressed. They certainly have staff to throw at it. I saw around 4 on hands and knees, hand weeding a lawn....
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