AUTUMN SUPPLEMENT 2014

 

 

Autumn Reflections
We wake up to a changed world in Scotland ...... but reassuringly gardens will continue to grow.

 

The warm dry autumn means that colours and displays are wonderful. Nerine and Colchicums and Schizostylis are providing vivid colour; Rudbeckia, grasses  and Kniphofia are giving form and interest and everywhere the autumn colours are coming in slow and steady.

 

We have a really good selection of plants to offer…some we have not had for years like Romneya and others such as the old Primroses and Auriculas looking great for the spring. 

 

Time to plant, the ground is still warm and for sure it will rain soon. Time to plan for the spring and plant some of our very good value groups and time to snap up some plants that we only occasionally can offer,  before they are sold out.

 

Happy trails. I will add autumn blogs as we go. It is a wonderful season. Right now, life goes on and I have to skin and freeze a sea of tomatoes.

 

Margaret

 

Click here to go to the Abriachan Nurseries website page to see the Autumn Supplement Online

 

Click here to download a pdf copy of the Autumn Supplement

 

       

      

Autumn Shrub Sale - 2013

Autumn Supplement

It is Autumn at Abriachan and that means it is time for our Autumn Supplement crammed full of great offers.

Primula Scotica

At the end of summer we have rows and rows of plants that we have propagated over the summer. We like to offer them at a really good price before we pot on.

I also know that many of you have been waiting for some of the precious Auriculas and Primroses, as we sold out early in the spring.

So Voilà!

Auricula Grey Monarch

Alongside them are some plants that really appreciate being planted in autumn, Digitalis ( Foxgloves), Hellebores and Candelabra Primroses.



Digitalis purpurea alba



We are also selling good range of Schizostylis (Kaffir Lilies) These blooms are wonderful in the autumn garden, glowing and providing border colour to catch the eye in the late summer sunlight.
Once owned always  loved.

Schizostylus coccinea major

 We hope you find something to tempt you,

Click here to go direct to the website where you can order online,
Click here to download the autumn supplement pdf (order form included)

Don has done a wonderful job taking photographs of the auriculas this year and the website is looking a lot more colourful with all the thumbnail photos (Click on a thumbnail to see a larger photo of the plant), we hope this is a helpful aid to choosing some new plants, sometimes reading descriptive text only can be a bit dry, so we are doing our best to  gradually add photos of every plant we sell.

 

Best Wishes,
The Davidson Family

A Woodland in November

I decided it would be good to walk through the garden once a month to share the highlights with you,
Often weeding, moving, lifting and sweeping..… you lose the wood for the trees. So this is my monthly exercise - finding the woodland.

I am starting near the bottom of our steep drive. We have a row of beech trees near the road, planted when we came here 28 years ago, they are now magnificent specimens. Each autumn they take their time, slowly, yellow, gold, a flash of red and then in October the colours deepen to a wonderful glowing copper bronze. They have been wonderful.

The wind is now taking them away, but there is still pleasure as they swirl and gather in groups at the edge of the tarmac.

Walking up the hill you pass the magnificent Acer Bloodgood. Can an Acer be too big?  I see that it’s winning the battle with the white lilac next to it. It is being squeezed out.

Up the steps and into the woodland and the first splendour that you meet is the Witch hazel. Our shrub is Hamamellis pallida, which has lovely pale lemon spidery flowers each winter, on the bare stems. The leaves are large and a clean acidic yellow, very noticeable this autumn. As the leaves fall off I can see myriad swollen flower buds. It will be a great show.

Hamamelis mollis

Rodgersia aesulifolia

Collapsed Hosta

The Rodgersia are colouring and collapsing, the Hostas are suddenly collapsing and they all flare with colour before they go down. As always the grasses are at their best before winter sets in. The most satisfying this year has been Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster', its bolt upright stems standing wonderfully well and mixing with Rudbeckia.

They look wonderful together in vase. 

As you wander up the steps you can’t but see the evergreens. They take on a glossy glow that lasts through the winter. Holly and Ivy both gaining prominence as the colour show fades.

Finally up to the big oak at the top of the garden.  The most magnificent plants we have and a gorgeous deep bronze colour.  Just now it is full of Jays, who have decided to turn up on Loch Ness and eat their way through the acorn crop.

They are noisy. Screeching and airborne when you or the dog appear. They remind me of scaled down Cockatoos. Squawk.

M

The Turning of the Season

It’s cold now. A depression roared in from the Atlantic last week and we still have blustery showers, and the first snow on the tops.  When I say snow on the tops I don’t mean Ben Nevis, the Ben has had snow for some weeks now, but snow on the hills opposite us on south Loch Ness…...hills around 200ft

The mornings have become dark and I have become very sluggish getting out to the garden. In less than a week the clocks will go back and we will have some brighter mornings, though colder of course.
No frost yet, but raw, wet mornings. I keep glancing at the met office forecasts looking for a mild settled spell to see out the last of the autumn colour. No luck that I can see.

The colour is still wonderful and now that the flashy early reds of Acers and Horse Chestnuts and Geans are through, the colours are taking on russet depths that clothe and pillow the hills in birch and oak.

A bright sunny day would be food for the soul.

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Autumn Offers

With the first day of autumn upon us, we have managed to find time to get our Autumn Supplement for 2011 organised.
Every August I walk among our nursery standing grounds and choose out the plants that are looking great for our mail order supplement.
These plants are ones that I know will settle well when planted in autumn and give a great performance next year.
I like to offer plants that will bring your garden to life again as autumn sets in; there are Schizostylis and Kniphofia, Primroses and Thistles, ready now to settle into the warm soil.

ABRIACHAN NURSERIES AUTUMN SUPPLEMENT

I hope you find something to tempt you, and I hope the midges are not as bad in your garden as they are currently in ours.

Love your Leaves

With the deluge of rain and the hurricane like winds that Scotland has been bestowed this weekend, the leaves are all well and truely down.

For some with small gardens or few trees, leaves are no issue and they are free to enjoy the beautiful colours and fantabulous crunching sounds, but for us and for many others, picking up the leaves is a necessary and slightly tedious autumn task.

For ourselves this is not garden vanity, on the many woodland paths that we have, the layer of wet leaves can get rather slushy, slippery and dangerous for our customers, and on the borders they can form such a dense layer that it can hinder growth of plants. A further side benefit of clearing up your leaves; other than the excellent leaf-mold it creates; is the removal of a means of possible transfer of disease.
- Remember that compost from leaves can be very weed free, but you can sometimes get birch, ash or elder seedlings coming up.


Here are a few guidelines that may help you in your own garden gathering.


* In a small garden, add leaves in layers to your compost heap, with your other autumn gatherings, big clumps will not break down well.

* In a big garden, gather your soft leaves (Elder, Birch, Hazel, Ash..) in their own bin for 12 months, then use as a soil improver or in your own compost mixes. Harder leaves (Oak, Beech, Alder, Holly)will take two years to break down sufficiantly.


*Be careful when raking or hoeing in Autumn, as snowdrops and narcissus are just below the surface and can be damaged.


*Those who had a little autumn forethought can haul in the nets they spread earlier over ponds and add the contents to the compost heap, it is a good idea to re-net, as the wind blow can bring more leaves back in. The rest of us must either drain and clean the pond or get busy with the waders and the rake.
- And while we are on the subject of ponds, plants in established ponds can get lifted and divided, give away the excess, or pot some up and protect them from frost and they will go down a charm at the spring charity sales.


*While clearing up leaves it can be a good time to clean up dead stems, I tend to prefer to do this in late Feb, early March as it gives some winter protection if the weather is hard, but many people prefer now to get it over with.

* With only XX amount of days to Christmas, the fine holly berries may well be a temptation to birds before you are ready for them, so protect some bunches with fleece or net bags.

Scandinavian Invasion

Redwings, Blackbirds, Thrushes and Fieldfairs arrived from Scandinavia over night and we woke to a garden exploding with the movements of birds.

All our trees laden with glowing autumn berries were covered in hungry beaks and i wished i had the forethought to set up a camera to get a time delay sequence as the berries vanished at astonishing speed and branches which were so laden they had been boughed over almost touching the ground in the morning , were by the afternoon free of all their weight and bouncing up to the sky.

I watched the fluttering of wings and tails for hours, on this amazing sunny autumn day, fascinated as they swooped and dived, gorging themselves whilst all the time nervously watching there surroundings and vanishing like lightening whenever they sensed human movement. This made photographing them a wee bit tricky, so i had to take surreptitious blurry shots through the kitchen window.

Venturing outside, they vanished, hiding away in the foliage of the pines and bracken until I had gone by.

I used the scarce sunlight to go round the garden taking some photographs of the last vestiges of autumn colour and found the beautiful Red Admirals had also come back out from their temporary hibernation to bask on the ivy in the sun. If you look closely at the photo above you can see over 15 butterflies - just beautiful!

Accidental Artichokes For Tea

We ate this years crop of Artichokes last night and mighty delicious they were too.



Dad had not intended to plant any of our own, put he threw the few remaining pots from the selling beds into the ground and ignored them from then on. The heads were large, the meat melting, the lemon and garlic butter a perfect accompaniment, I have urged him to plant a whole bed of them next year and perhaps with a little more love we may get an even larger, even more delicious crop.



However, Mum declared that she was not that impressed and that it seemed to her the perfect food if you were on a diet as it took, "so long to eat the darned thing"

The Polytunnel Saga

At around 11.30 on New Year's Eve over ten years ago, while I rugging up in preparation for going out first footing on the Abriachan hill, Dad was in the bottom polytunnel tucking in some of the more delicate plants with fleece.

There was a hell of a gale blowing and the wind was roaring down the Loch and through the trees, whipping up the snow and slamming into the house. We have several huge fir trees that grow tight together in the wee Kilianan graveyard that nestles at the bottom of our garden, and they were being whipped back and forth by huge gusts of chilling wind until one huge breath caught one of the firs of guard and snapped the huge trunk sending the whole top half of over 30ft crashing down right on top of the tunnel where Dad stood.

He avoided being squashed like a pancake by only a few feet, the branches tore through the plastic of the tunnel and crushed the metal struts all around him, leaving him unharmed but a little surprised in the remains.

Years on, and the tunnel had been well patched up and repaired, though it was never quite the same again. This year, the hard wearing plastic was once more full of holes, though this time from age and weather more than sudden storm damage. So instead of replacing the plastic once again, Dad has decided to relocate the tunnel up the hill to a fresh sunny spot where he will be able to fill it with plants that require a little more light and warmth.

The trees in the graveyard now have a gaping hole where the tree fell, though as you can see in the lovely photograph above, it still looks rather grand.

So, for the last week, my fabulous Australian boyfriend and Dad have been flattening out a fresh spot, digging the required trenches and then rejigging the whole shebang to fit into the new spot.

Autumn arrives at Loch Ness

Standing at the entrance to the garden and looking up into the lush foliage and native woodland, the changing colours of autumn simply make you smile.

There is the the Barbie pink of the Nerine set off by a backdrop of smoldering orange Acer leaves.

The Tulip Tree (Liriodendron) shows off its lemon yellow leaves, contrasting beautifully with the brilliant red berries of the rowan. And above the flashes of harvest yellow Rudbeckia, the shimmering mountain of white Eucryphia covered in dancing Red Admiral butterflies. It is just lovely.

We have had a run of mild sunny days, but with November starting to peek over the horizon it will not be long before the first frosts creep in.

At this time of the year Dad (better known as Don) has been propagating perennials, placing the most tender into the polytunnels for a little added protection.

With the help of our fabulous staff Jo, Shelia and Rebecca, He has also been doing the long and rather tedious annual stocktake, cleaning out some of the summer borders and doing what he calls 'General maintance and reflection'.

It seems to be a wonderfully abundant Autumn, the trees are all hanging heavy with berries, Rowan, Crabapple, the Cotoneaster, Pyrocantha, Hawthorn, Rosehips, Holly, Sloes and Elder have all got great clusters of fruit, still on the bough due to the late arrival of all the migratory birds who have normally stripped the trees bare by this time of the year. Although Daddy said he saw the blackbirds feasting today, so maybe by the end of the week there will be lots of fat birds and light branches.

Hamish has been attending farmers markets all year from Dingwall to Dundee. Next Saturday (the 24th Oct) we will be at a Highland Produce Market in Inverness Falcon Square as part of the Homecoming Scotland celebrations. We will be selling herbs to tie in with the theme of food and drink, and I have been painting terracotta pots with wee herb pictures that I will sell for people to plant their herbs in and keep them in the kitchens.