The Year of The Poppy

Back in winter I clearly recall saying to Donald ”This is 2014 and if ever there was one, this is the year of the poppy”
And so it is. We have the 100 year anniversary of the outbreak of the 1st world war, and as August approaches we will all be swept up in the reflection and memories that the date and its attendant ceremonies will awaken.
Anyone of my post 2nd world war generation will be steeped in family stories and memories of the 1914-1918 war. They were 50 year old memories when I was a teenager, and my grandfather was gone, at a younger age than necessary as the long shadow of the trenches and gassing and the whole experience took its long slow toll on many British men.
The memories and reflections have freshened in recent years, and the annual Memorial Day ceremonies are now very well attended, and red poppies are a potent symbol in our lives.

Looking around the nursery and the garden, it has been surprising and pleasing to see the range of poppies we grow and Donald has responded to my never ending desire to add more.
I’ll keep the reporting coming over the summer and autumn as they come into flower, but here is the first instalment and they look terrific.

Californian Poppy  (Escholtzia californica)
These are fabulous and without peer on a warm sunny day. We grow the single orange, no mixtures or frilled varieties as I find they just do not have the impact and sheer exuberance of the orange. They now self-seed for us, and that gets things moving after a mild winter.

Iceland Poppies (Papaver nudicaule)
A favourite as we used to grow lots in The Falkland Islands, where they seemed to thrive on cool summers and sea spray. Well they would wouldn’t they.
Best grown as seed & growth year 1 (sown in March/April or even May) and up to flower year 2. A good percentage carries on into years 3 and 4. 
They make really good cut flowers, plunge them into a deep jug of water.

Welsh Poppies  (Meconopsis cambrica)
Tough, easy to grow poppies. We like to create areas of the garden where they are all yellow or all orange, and I love the red ones that pop up unexpectedly in many corners. Very tolerant of woodland shade and hence extremely useful to brighten dull corners. 

Oriental Poppies (Papaver orientale)
These are the huge early summer poppies. They have large heads and centres of quivering black stamens. All colours are wonderful, but the reds and pinks stand out for us with performance and you have to love the huge whites with black thumb prints at the base of the petals and the striking black centres. Feed well and have a nearby perennial or some annuals to take over the space as these die down.  Show stoppers!

Himalayan Poppies (Meconopsis)
Any gardener will have heart stopping moments of pleasure when they see these superb blue poppies growing well.  We have acid sandy soil, and provided we keep them well fed, and watch they do not dry out, these aristocratic, elegant plants do wonderfully  well for us.  

There are a range of cultivars and some very nice coloured variants like Hensol Violet. 
I’ll try and guide you through them and all our other poppies, including the fabulous ladybird poppies, in another Blog another time.
MD

2013 Plant Catalogue - Now Online

ABRIACHAN 30 YEARS ON

 

So, how did that happen? Suddenly it is 30 years on.

We arrived at Abriachan in 1983 after 12 years living and working in the Falkland Islands. It took us time to settle, but somehow, setting up the nursery and beginning the garden did the job.

We began as all gardens should, by planting vegetables and soft fruit, but the stony soil and the oak and hazel woodlands drew us on up the hill.

So what began with a few alpines, swiftly gained momentum? Don sweated away creating dry stone walls and paths, criss-crossing the hill side and gradually our woodland and dry slope garden took shape.

I believe gardens are always a reflection of their owners and we are no different. We have lived overseas in New Zealand and the Falklands and we grow plants from both places as they mean something to us and also do pretty well in our climate.  Living in Scotland we must accept the limitations of the weather, but nevertheless we find ourselves pushing the boundaries of hardiness all of the time.

Every year we do something new in the garden, and there is still so much to learn. Like many gardeners, we have some favourites and start collections, my personal passions are the old fashion primroses and auricula, and there will be more yet.

It has been 30 years of huge interest and fun.  All of our family have contributed in so many ways and together with our staff and the many in our community who have encouraged us over the years; and not least you, our customers who have made our imaginings come true. We have made something beautiful between us.

Thank you all.

Margaret Davidson

The 2013 Abriachan Nurseries Plant Catalogue is now online  to download as a pdf and to purchase online through paypal
Hardcopies will be sent out in the post in the next weeks, please contact us if you would like to be added to the mailing list

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