Mostly native
The family walk was looking unhopeful with miserable weather – drizzle and low cloud. By the time we got to the start, just a few miles above Torphins in the Corrennie hills, there was thick fog. Other than the occasional tree looming out of the mist there was nothing much to be seen. Nothing to…
Renewal
It’s a glorious time of year. Walking up the Crathes drive to the accompaniment of a mewling buzzard, I take in my favourite cherry, Prunus yedoensis near the Millpond; I note that some of the beech and horse chestnut buds are bursting and in the native woodland area I find a new spring flower. It’s…
What price a tree; what price a garden?
March has almost passed me by. It isn’t that I haven’t noticed it, but more because it seems to have travelled in the fast lane whilst I was dealing with domestic concerns such as new heating systems. So here we are with the clocks changed to summertime, the chionodoxa blue covering the Crathes walled garden…
1066 and all those rabbits
The cute little rabbit with its impressive fecundity is devastating the walled garden. Problems regarding invasive species is a recurring theme at Crathes and the recent works on the entrance building (with its alternative access), the rose garden (with a temporary hole in the wall), and the current replacement of the Croquet Lawn wall have…
Blowing hot and cold
It was a bonny cold January day as I walked up the Crathes drive. A white frost lay across the fields, but the highland cattle are hardy beasts with thick coats well able to cope with the cold. In the walled garden the frost was not so intense. The gardeners were busy on their various…
New Year Resolutions
As winter takes its turn I see the garden from a different perspective. There are plants that I have never noticed before – how can that be that I have walked passed the Japanese beauty berry, Callicarpa japonica, hundreds of times with blinkered eyes? Now I see that it has delicate mauve berries. I must…
The cycles of life
On a dull day at the end of October I contemplate the trees that are preparing for the coming winter. Large flat leaves become a problem as temperature and light levels dip and winter storms threaten; by dropping them the broadleaf trees can reduce water loss and wind damage until the kinder days of spring…
Bedtime stories
During the last few days my garden has been visited by hundreds of redwings feasting on rowans which are plentiful around Torphins. They have flown in from Scandinavia and will move on, probably up Deeside where the rowans are equally abundant. There are other signs of the approaching winter: the occasional frost, the long skeins…
A passion for plants
It’s a glorious sunny day when I happen upon Philippa and her team working on the plant audit. The Double Shrub Border and the Golden Garden are the areas under scrutiny. This is the penultimate day for the Crathes survey; next week the team goes to Inverewe. They will be back in the winter, based…
Home and away
Anticipating the excitement of exploring new landscapes is now tempered with the limitations of age; gardens offer alternative and accessible horizons. I was thus delighted to visit three very different gardens during our recent holiday on the Northumbrian coast. The Gertrude Jekyll garden on Lindisfarne is small, unpretentious, and utterly charming. The walled garden once…
The hot days of summer
As the first red alert for heat in the south of England is given out by the Met Office, gardeners once more turn their thoughts to coping with extreme weather: winter storms and summer droughts. Scotland is renowned for its cool climate but for how long? For the last decade the head gardeners at Crathes…
Lovely lupins
The 1940s suburban Manchester garden of my childhood was full of lupins; the 2022 June Border of Crathes Castle is full of lupins. And all the gardens in between seem to have had at least some lupins. There are no native lupins in Britain, but some species, which originate from North America, have been grown…
Dreams and practicalities
Repetition is inevitably part of gardening; some of it welcome, some not so. Every year at Crathes we anticipate the lovely blossoms of April and May and the cottage garden abundance of the June border. The brevity of some favourites only adds to their charm and I make no apologies for repeating my favourites. Caring…
A Victorian legacy
There have been glasshouses at Crathes since the mid nineteenth century. A large rather fancy one that used to grace the north end of the Croquet Lawn was demolished in 1884. The present five stepped glasshouses inside the Walled Garden are by Mackenzie and Moncur (M&M) and date from around 1886. The Victorian firm of…
An enigmatic champion
Although it had started off frosty, the first day of March quickly warmed up and people exchanged greetings with comments about spring as they soaked up the sun’s warmth. The next day was cold, windy and grey; winter had returned. The meteorological beginning of spring is indeed the first of March, but the astronomical beginning…
Donald far’s yer troosers?
You probably know the Scottish traditional song that begins ‘Let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low’, made famous by Callum Kennedy and Andy Stewart half a century ago, so I’ll not bother you with the lyrics. But it got into my head as I was contemplating the most recent storms, Malik and…
American giants and English oaks
It was a glorious day at the end of 2021 and unusually mild – 12 degrees Celsius. The car park was almost full and families were making the most of the erratic weather walking those trails that had reopened after the storms. A bad back had prevented me from stravaiging about in the usual way…
Homage to trees
In Torphins we had tea early on the Friday 26 November because the lights had been flickering, the wind was rising and a gale was forecast. We had just finished eating when the power went completely. Along the east side of Scotland and down into England thousands of trees were blown over, many of them…
Challenges
As the politicians, delegates and protesters return to their various countries we ponder on the outcomes of COP26. This year when most of the leaders of around 200 participating nations came to Scotland, when part of Glasgow became United Nations territory for a while, when an estimated 100,000 people filled the streets of Glasgow on…
Hope springs eternal
There’s a lot of hope involved in gardening. I watch Joanna tending her cuttings in the enlarged propagation bench. On the hot days of September it needed a lot of care – shading the cuttings with a green mesh in the heat, but rolling back the mesh to water or mist maybe four or five…
It’s all in the genes
As August turns to September we enjoy the hot colours of summer: the tiger lilies; the red dahlias; the orange heleniums, the many salvias, and – new to the garden – the little bat-faced cuphea, Cuphea llavea ‘Torpedo’, which makes a low mound of bright red and purple flowers. The cuphea is a native of…
A place for everything?
There’s a definite air of excitement as we view the dipping pool and its new carnivorous plants. In Scotland we have our native carnivorous plants – sundews, butterwort and bladderworts – but these North American plants are monsters in comparison. Some will grow to over a metre in suitable conditions. Both they and the Scottish…
Who knows where the time goes?
The Evolution Garden at Crathes is finally completed – in so much as a garden is ever completed. The triangular piece of garden between the June Border and the Doocot Border was for many years used as a nursery for cardiocrinums, but by the end of the last century the lilies were not doing very…
A global perspective
Crathes is famed for the diversity of its planting; for centuries plants have arrived from across the globe. Sir James Burnett (1880-1953) and his wife Sybil Crozier-Smith (1889-1960) were the principal architects of the diversity, and the National Trust for Scotland has since tried to honour their vision. Whilst we celebrate the diversity, we have…
‘Seven years’ weeding’
The frost continued into the first week of May. When finally there was respite, it was time to get the plants moving. When I visit on 11 May the broadspan greenhouse is almost empty and the yard is full of trays of bedding plants – gazanias and zaluzianskyas. The broadspan will not be empty for…
Trillium challenge
I have never thought too much about trilliums apart from the fact that they are beautiful; actually I don’t think I had ever seen them before I came to Crathes. Recently there have been new trilliums appearing in the garden so this year seems a good time to find out more. Tri for three: three…
April is the cruellest month
Not really I muse. In the northern hemisphere April is a glorious time of the year with all the promise of summer ahead. This year, however, the weather has been cruel across much of Britain. The frosts I mentioned before have been even harder these last two weeks and much that struggled through to the…
Counting the cost
James was looking pleased as I entered the yard the other day. He was contemplating some newly delivered choice plants. The little conifer Pinus strobus ‘Minuta’ is destined for the Evolution Garden and the vines Vitis ‘Strawberry’ are to be planted against the Viewpoint fence. They will probably fruit, and in a good summer should…
Biding time
We’re all biding time just now; waiting for warmer weather; waiting to see how the virus responds to lockdowns and vaccines; waiting to pick up our lives again. It’s no different in the gardens; the gardeners all long for normality. But whilst many projects are going ‘full steam ahead’ (see last post), biding time is…
Full steam ahead
With the garden now open during the week I can finally check out the damage done by the hard frosts of February. Much has gone, but there are surprises. The aeoniums that were put into the polytunnels have suffered; the Echium pininana that did so well in the early part of the winter are definitely…
Travellers’ Tales
Two hundred years ago the walk of seven or eight miles from Crathes Castle to the Castle of Midmar by way of the Hill of Fare was nothing out of the ordinary for Robert Burnett 7th Baronet of Leys, and there are many today who can appreciate the pleasure of such a walk. Robert (1755-1837)…
The Wood Wide Web
Pottering about in the Crathes woods one November day in 2013 I came upon an old larch tree. Always happy to make the acquaintance of an interesting tree I took a photograph and noticed the fungus growing at the base of the tree and nearby. Although the fungus on the ground looked like a cow…
A winter’s walk
It happens that one of my favourite walks takes me through the Craigmyle estate – an estate that has had connections with Crathes since at least the seventeenth century. Since it is a circular walk of three to four miles from my door it is ideal for Lockdown exercise. Craigmyle lies to the east of…
Tis the season for quizzes
Happy New Year! Whilst the short term view of the year is alarming, the long view does look more hopeful. Meantime Lockdown has returned and Crathes is off limits for volunteers. The gardening staff are still working, but other Crathes staff are on furlough. The walled garden is shut until further notice. Last year has…
Goodbye to 2020
Few of us will regret the passing of 2020. Gardens and green places, however, have been a star turn during this difficult year as the outside world became the safe place to be. Those of us who have gardens realise how fortunate we are; not only is it a safe place to be, but –…
Pushing the limits
With the mild days gone we can see how much damage the frost does generally, and how tender plants can sometimes survive in sheltered parts of the garden against expectations. Most of the fuchsias are finished for the year, but will come back in the spring. Fuchsia reflexa in the Upper Pool Garden may be…
Mild November days
This November has been incredibly mild, until a short sharp diversion of the Jet Stream this last Thursday brought arctic winds from the north. Although it only lasted 24 hours I wonder what will have happened to the flowers that gave me so much pleasure earlier in the month – fuchsias, salvias, gazanias, penstemons, the…
…purple and orange and blue
With the frosts holding off, the garden offers plenty of colour combinations to cheer our spirits. The oranges, yellows and reds of the turning leaves remain dominant, but a few blue flowers can still be found. The nepeta beside the trellis that was cut back on 21 July has been re-flowering for a few weeks…
Red and yellow and pink and green…
As the seasons change, so does the palette. Leaves become more important in our colour schemes as green chlorophyll is reabsorbed exposing yellow carotinoids and red anthocyanins. Berries and fruits, too, are more commonly yellow, orange or red. It’s a big show before winter sets in. Some years ago on an October visit to Benmore…
The East West divide
During the last days of September we were holidaying on the Mull of Kintyre. Certainly there was ‘a mist rolling in from the sea’ on occasion, but mostly we had fantastic weather. The day we took the ferry to Gigha was one of those lovely days. Gigha is a small island to the west of…
Hanging on to summer
Mid-September and the days are balmy and delicious. In the garden the salvias continue to shine, the later flowering Salvia corrugata catching attention with its dark green corrugated leaves, its rusty tomentose stems, and it glorious blue flowers. Nosing around the internet I find an interesting story regarding its introduction. Jim Archibald, a Scot, started…
Don’t dismiss the flies
With the possibility of down-sizing I need to get rid of some books, but it’s not easy. I can spend an afternoon considering two books before putting them back on the shelves. I was looking through some bound copies of The Gardener, a ‘Weekly Journal’ for 1901 when I came across an article on pollination…
Enjoying the Salvias
This month I have been admiring the plants that grow in the borders beside the glasshouses. A few more salvias have been learned: Salvia elegans – bright red and a little more elongated in flower than S. fulgens; Salvia ‘Amistad’ which is deep purple with an even darker purple calyx – thought to be a…
Healing weeds
The usual hedge cutting is to be limited this year. The MEWP (Mobile Elevated Working Platform) has been hired for three weeks only and has to catch up with the Portugal laurels which didn’t get their usual spring trim. So cutting will be a matter of prioritising. The egg and eggcups will of course be…
The North Ladies
My eye was drawn to an attractive lily at the corner of the Red Garden. The label informed ‘Karen North’. Now who could she be? Lilium lankongenseis is one of the Turk’s cap Asiatic lilies from China and Tibet, but the development of the hybrid ‘North Ladies’ turns out to be a Scottish story. Dr…
Summertime… and the living is hard
What a thrill to return to Crathes! The blackcap was singing as if in welcome; various heady scents drifted over the garden; the deutzia and philadelphus were as good as I had remembered; the roses – especially Celeste – were there to delight; the imposing onopordum thistles were in flower; and catching up with the…
Welcome back
Excitement builds as I contemplate returning to the garden. It’s over 100 days since my last visit. The garden will open on Monday 6 July. Joanna reports that she has been planting out in the Upper Pool Garden. The bedding out is more or less completed although they were a little short of plants on…
An exciting prospect
The daily news is hopeful and it looks as if the garden might open sometime in July. The photographs sent this week make that a very exciting prospect. When I wrote about the Aeonium tabuliforme in April I didn’t indicate the overwhelming success of the germination; neither did I realise at the time how the…
Castle, cottage, and fine design
Whilst everything remains uncertain, the garden at Crathes is definitely gearing up for visitors. Joanna reports that the June Border is coming on nicely and that planting out has started in earnest. The half-hardy beds are filling up, the bananas and succulents are finding their place, and the purple bell vines, Rhodochiton atrosanguineus, are being…
The Imperial Flower
Even in normal times it’s difficult to keep up with the garden in May. At Crathes with three gardeners and many volunteers short, the remaining three gardeners are working hard, prioritising, and, like all of us, planning for an uncertain future. With Joanna back at work there is a little more time to take photographs…
Armchair travels
We may be in Lockdown, but I have travelled a fair amount this week in a virtual quest to learn a little more about the berberis shrubs, and since there are about two hundred species in the world I do mean a ‘little’. None are native to Britain, but some berberis are naturalised – I…
Patience is a Virtue
When, in 1937, Vita Sackville-West wrote about her 25 favourite flowers, she included two fritillaries. The crown imperial, Fritillaria imperialis, was especially important to her because she had come upon it unexpectedly growing in a damp ravine in Persia where ‘the Crown Imperials stood up like torches between the wet rocks’. F. imperialis is on…
Fashions come and go – carnations and succulents
April is the cherry month and whilst there are plenty of cherries around Torphins, I will miss the Crathes specialities. However, I was amazed to see James’s photograph of the Prunus incisa ‘Moerheimii’ on the Doocot Border in full flower. I don’t remember it being so covered in bloom in previous years. I struggled with…
Americans in the Garden
We live in surreal times and being unable to visit our favourite places is of minor importance in the scheme of things, but I will not be the only person missing Crathes. Gardens, however, go on growing regardless. I am keeping in touch with the James, the Head Gardener, as much as possible, and ten…
Tim’s Medal
Here in lower Deeside, we have had the most glorious sunny weather, if a little cold. Mostly too cold for the honeybees; Steve, who keeps bees, tells me that the temperature needs to be above nine degrees before there is much activity. When the bees finally get on the move they will find plenty of…
Farewell to the eucalyptus
The first snow of 2020 fell this week, but it was not of much account. It didn’t do any damage, but the occasional hard frosts of winter did; in particular I mourn the lovely Stachyurus praecox, its flowers now all shriveled and brown. The shrub with the small white flowers on the white border has…
Good news for dragonflies
The honeybees are busy in the Walled Garden at Crathes on these sunny February days. From the great diversity of plants they find a good selection of flowers to provide pollen and nectar. The bees belong to the Aberdeen and District Beekeepers’ Association who have an apiary beside the carpark. Soon the honeybees will be…
What’s in a name – Lamont and Menzies?
Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Charles Lamont’ is looking good in this mild weather. Although it doesn’t mind the snow the flowers can turn brown with a sharp frost. Charles Lamont was an assistant curator at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). In 1933 he was experimenting with crossing Viburnum grandiflorum with Viburnum farreri (previously V. fragrans).…
Sycamores can be a nuisance
Routine work continues in the erratic weather with tidying of beds, regular pruning and pot washing. The bothy and glasshouse four are being painted. Goodness knows how long since the bothy was painted – it’s only for gardeners – but as a rule one glasshouse interior is painted each year. Contractors do the exterior painting…
Hollies are not just for Christmas
Although the garden was ‘put to bed’ by November, there is a hive of activity during these winter days. Leaf clearing, compost spreading and pruning has begun and will carry on until spring arrives. Bulbs have been planted and plants and seeds have been ordered. Whilst the abundance of herbaceous flowers is gone for the…
Notes from Crathes 