March White Rabbit

Oh dear, oh dear…I find myself waking up and thinking about everything there is to do and panicking just like the white rabbit…I’m late I’m late.

Well, the only excuse is it has been a cold month. Well, in truth not even that, it has been a rough old switchback of a month, one mild sunny day and the next back to snow showers.
We have snow forecast on the tops again tonight.  So I have let other things dominate my time and energy; but the balance must shift back now and 'just get another layer of fleece on and get out there woman!'

I have been around the garden looking for signs of spring and my goodness they are all there.  The other evening I had a walk around and several “oh my goodness look at that” experiences.
Here are a few of them:
White Daphne mezeron, this just gets better slowly every year and of course a scent to knock your head off. 

The snowdrops and snowflakes are giving way to the daffodils, and this year more than any other I have loved taking the daffodils indoors to watch the buds open. They are wonderfully cheerful.

Some nice crocus tomassinianus here and there, but for every ten we plant, the mice and voles find and eat nine. Still onwards and upwards, and let’s hope they have a population collapse this year..…the mice not the crocus. 

The Rhododendron praecox has defied all the odds and has avoided the frost on its ridiculously early blossom. It is a wonderful cloud of violet  purple. Bravo. 

Hellebores are everywhere. Where we remember, or when they look too spotty, we cut the old leaves off and that lets the flowers show off really well and the new leaves seem to accelerate through. All sorts of flowers; doubles, dark and pale singles, white and spotty ones and some robust excellent hybrids like ericsmithii. Such great garden value.
Margaret Davidson

Abriachan Hydro scheme - March Update

Despite a cold, occasionally wintry month…there has been really good progress with the new Abriachan hydro scheme.   (Click here to read the first explanatory blog post)

The cement arrived for casting the base for the turbine and was pumped over the stream ( the Kilianan)  by a 120ft long elephant’s trunk.


The turbine building has been making steady progress and walls all in now. 

The pipe to carry the water was welded together in sections and dragged down the hill to lie in its ditch like a giant black anaconda. 

And most exciting, the new 99kw turbine arrived on a very sophisticated lorry and was craned into the new building and connected. The old turbine made its way out on the same day and was trucked away.  A small wistful glance from us all watching it go, when it operated well it was a good friend.

So, so far, good progress but quite a bit to go yet.

Auricula and Primrose Open Weekend

Weeds and Waistlines, Signs of Spring!

How can I be sure that this is spring?
It is warmer, yes. The beautiful but icy grip of the Scandinavian anticyclone is loosened.

It is dry, surprisingly so and distant hills have smoke patches every day as estates start the moor-burning season. It keeps the fire services busy and hopefully will be finished before the grouse and other ground nesters start to build.

No, the real reason I know is that my muscles ache and I have the oddest twinges. Such is age and a soft winter.

My waistline is definitely broader and after about 15 minutes of wheel barrow and lifting work, I am starting to think about the next tea break.

This last winter I suddenly decided after years of neglect, that my family needed cake. Well yes, I can still bake, but it will have to stop!

Definitely time to get out and stay out.

Spring also brings that restlessness that sees every messy corner and cobweb. A brisk walk around, shows up the leaves that have not been lifted, the jumble of pots in odd corners, and the grassed up areas you meant to deal with last July.

The corners no-one is supposed to see, where the dead pots lurk and the Jabberwocky jabbers

And look under the leaves of Epimediums or winter green ferns and there is my old friend ground elder and yes, the dandelions and bittercress have gained volume over this last week.

 

 

Overwhelmed and slightly panicky…it must be spring . The only defence is to lift your eyes and enjoy the hazel catkins, the first primroses and the wonderful snowdrops.

However, time to spring clean….If I can find the energy!

Margaret

Spring in Scotland

We are home in Abriachan and this morning was a perfect winter day.
The sunlight came across the Loch and lit up all the golden yellow and glistening dark green of evergreens. It rained overnight and drops of water were glistening along branches and giving a zest to the air.

It has been cold this past week and grey, so to see so many shrubs with flower is a real lift for the sprit.
The early Witch Hazel, Hamamelis x intermedia Pallida is wonderful. It is close by the house, looking magnificent against a blue winter sky.

Walking through the garden yesterday, it is always a surprise how good the moss looks on the stone walls. When the leaves are off the trees, the moss seems to take centre arena and is a perfect foil for winter blooms and early bulbs.

I walked up through the steps and into the woodland, elated to see the upright stems and flowers of Mahonia x media Charity. These branches pull the arch of the sky down within reach.

The Sarcococca confusa; sweet box; behind the Font Stone wall brought a gasp of pleasure as I have never seen it looking so well and with lots of the small dizzily, fragrant flowers amongst the leaves.

The final surprise yesterday was Ilex…..a wonderful variegated holly…..dripping with berries and outlined against the sky.

It’s good to be home and how great is it that our garden greets us with such splendour.

Love (and a garden) in a Warm Climate

Our daughter Elizabeth has a garden at Lyttleton on the South Island of New Zealand.

It is an overused word, but her garden really is ' lovely'

 

Lyttleton is a quirky village ....lots of old characterful wooden houses, arranged around the slopes of a volcanic harbour.  At the bottom of the hill is the port for Christchurch.
The busy Port and the comings and goings of container ships and ferries make Lyttelton a real lively place.

Lizzy's garden is a real cottage garden in all senses, though without livestock as yet.

She has bowers of roses and native plants side by side, and beds of annuals and old fashioned flowers like columbines next to lush rows of potatoes and beds of silver beet and kale.  Leeks and many coloured lettuce and fruit bushes backing up and filling border gaps.

 

If Lizzy has learnt anything from her nurserymen parents, it is to feed and to make compost, both of which she does.

 

New Zealand is blessed with warm summers and mild winters, but with enough of a chill in the winter to ensure the plants have a real rest season and know where they are.

Elizabeth has also learnt our love of annuals and the garden is hence ensured of pots of summer colour - cornflowers, pot marigold, cosmos, and lots of sweet peas.

 

And here and there are the native plants, flax, southern beech, ake-ake.  All happy and thriving and full of birds in the early morning and late afternoon. You have to love the liquid notes of the bell birds and the fantails, along side naturalised European birds, the yellowhammers and goldfinches and black birds.

She has to water a lot with the dry New Zealand winds and strong strong sunlight. This will become less as she builds up the humus and fertility in the soil.
 

Whilst deadheading in Lizzy's garden today, It struck me that it is the job of every gardener to pass on their soil in better condition than they found it.  Viva la compost!
 

MD Lyttelton.  January 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

Following my nose

Rain again…in fact a ferocious storm, with sheet lightening.
Further south from here the storms were terrible and many people were flooded. Here it was short and very sharp.  
Afterwards it was warm. The air was clear and is almost fizzing, washed clean.
What did people say - you could smell the ozone? 

That combination of warmth and rain liberated some of the earth smells and the newly mounded earth on the potatoes, felt warm and smelt spicy and earthy.
Walking on up the steps I can smell apples, it is the green sharp apple smell of Rosa rubiginosa, Sweet Briar or Elgantine. This rose has single pink flowers in June/July…and is pretty enough, but you should grow it for the wonderful scent of apples that follows a summer shower.

Close by is Madame Isaac Pereire, a full blown dark, dusky pink rose with the perfect old rose scent; and she is so generous with that scent that she perfumes the air around the blooms; intoxicating.

On through the woodland paths and the deciduous azaleas are still scenting the damp warm air, and as I go further up the steps there is that honey scented area. I have never been able to pin down exactly where that scent comes from, but it perfumes the air almost all year….maybe I'll stop looking and just accept it.
Around and on to the open hill side and the birch trees have that glorious peppery tang.
And this week I have been putting pots of night scented stock into corners near to where we will walk in the evenings. In 2 weeks I hope to smell their wonderful sweet-shop scent of the tiny stock flowers when I drive in around dark. Aahhhh.

My top five favourite garden smells: (for today)
1. Balsam poplar
2. Lily of the valley
3. Honeysuckle
4. Old roses
5. Dianthus Mrs Sinkins (And a sneeky number six -  Sweet peas - of course)

M Davidson

Old Fashioned Primroses

It is cold. After a wonderful sunny March as is often said “We have paid for it!!”
Cold nights, freezing dawns, cold days, five degrees….rain….lots of it…and snow on the tops, and sometimes even at our lower level.
You wake to a skim of snow that thaws over the morning.

It is the young birds that worry me. Birds nested early and enthusiastically in March. I hope they can keep those babies warm.

Plants just slow down. After a fast start, many spring plants seem almost to be suspended slowly opening their flowers and holding them close to retain a little warmth.

This year there has been markedly increased interest in the old fashioned primroses, one of our specialist groups of plants.

Primula Wanda

Primula Amy Smith

What are old fashioned primroses? Well they are cultivated primroses, often of some antiquity, all good garden plants and hardy.
Most are singles, some are wonderful old doubles and some are polyanthus form. 

This month, April, I am canvassing the villages around Loch Ness in my bid to be re-elected as the Local Highland Councillor, I am often looking over walls into gardens as I am going around.  I see lots of old primroses; they are the ones that have survived for generations, passed from mother to daughter, neighbour to neighbour.
I see Wanda, that great old magenta primroses, an old yellow polyanthus and recently a lovely pale mauve pink primrose, whose name no one seems to know.

Primula Lilacina Plena

Look across the range of primroses we sell, and you see some wonderful old varieties.
These plants do not have the zazzle colours, red, orange, yellow & pink that you can buy in supermarkets and garden centres, but they do have quiet subtle charm.


I have more than one favourite and the plants do look different from year to year.
This year, the pretty Amy Smith with soft pink flowers on dark bronze foliage and Lady Greer, which has dainty Polyanthus heads of biscuit yellow.

And of course then there are the doubles, how could I garden without the old alba plena and the glorious Quakers Bonnet, lilacina plena, but they really are another story and a wonderful one at that.
 Margaret

Adventuring into the tangled web

Being a small plant nursery owner is rather unlikely to make you rich, even when you have Nessy on your side and many points running in your favour:

1. Our nursery is a small operation - family owned and run (With the assistance of several knowledgeable, loyal and wonderful women) and we are located on a beautiful hillside in one of the most gorgeous areas of Scotland.  
2. We choose our plants carefully, grow them in our own woodland garden to assess their hardiness, vigour, beauty, scent and suitability for Scottish gardeners, and only then sell them in our nursery.
   Buying from us, you know that the plants have been well grown from strong stock, well educated on Radio 4, and hardened off to cope with challenging Scottish temperatures.
3. We grow and sell many rare and unusual varieties that can trickier to propagate and maintain, so are infrequently stocked by the big nurseries as they are not perceived to be worth the time and energy required.
4. We also sell more exotic varieties influenced by our time in New Zealand and the Falkland Islands, varieties which may not have been considered by many gardeners until they see them growing this far North.

All these positive factors are in themselves, not always enough to rake in the millions, and whilst we have a strong and loyal base of customers - the convenience and illusory value of plants available in a wealth of supermarkets and hardware stores has impacted on many small nurseries. 

And so, several years ago we reached out to the Internet to expand our horticultural presence - our website has grown and improved and we have made tentative social media explorations through Flickr galleries, a Facebook page, a new Pinterest page (Still finding our feet) and of course this blog to expand our customer base and hopefully allow technological word-of-mouth to tempt more gardeners to Abriachan. 

Will the 'likes' and 'stars', 'shares' and 'comments' translate into more people in the nursery and more plants in the post? Maybe, maybe not, time will tell, yet no matter what, we have gained many new friends and been made to feel welcome as part of the online community.

As we have grown our own blog, I have discovered the wonderful world of gardening bloggers, who share their stories, their humour, their knowledge and their passion for gardening with the wider world.
Great sites like Blotanical (which hopefully will survive its current difficulties),  Garden Grab @ Fennel & Fern, Gardeners Voice and many others allow for easy exploration of a worldwide community of gardening blogs and it is rather too easy to fall down the rabbit hole of reading and following links from one blog to another.

We still send out our plant catalogue in the mail each year, as I believe you can never replace the tactile experience of reading through plant descriptions and choosing your selection by hand with a cat on your knee. 
Many of our customers have only ever ordered by mail, we have never met face to face, yet we often feel a friendship develop, with lovely handwritten notes included with their orders, and comments on how the plants are growing in their gardens.  They trust us to provide them with quality plants and when necessary to substitute a plant that we think they might enjoy if we are sold out of one that has been requested. 
We were wary that the Internet might not nurture the same personal relationships with our customers, and while it is true that orders from the website are less likely to include personal notes, we have been delighted at the warmth and encouragement we have received through comments on the blog and even more delightful, the personal visits from some other bloggers from around the country, who may never have discovered us had we not stepped deeper into the web-world.

So we shall venture onward, thank you for walking with us on this path.
The Davidsons

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