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

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

A Pohutukawa Christmas

We are in the South Island of New Zealand again, visiting family and friends for Christmas and New Year and taking every chance to get out into the hills and the native bush.

We also spend a fair amount of time looking over fences and into people's gardens as we walk up the steep hills here in Lytellton.

What you notice straight away is that many of the tender summer bedding plants we grow at home in Scotland, do exceptionally well here, in fact they thrive.
Banks of geraniums, vast clumps of pelargoniums, flowering clumps of aeoniums and roses to die for.
The roses, the roses, it makes  you  understand that many roses really love a milder winter.

 

 

 

Many of the modern Hybrid T roses look great. In Scotland, Iceberg is a virus ridden, frequently black spotted, defoliated white floribunda, here it is a healthy vigorous shrub and completely reliable white!
David Austin roses are very popular  here.  I believe that is because many of the repeat flowering modern roses that he raises also love a mild winter.

Of course, It can get too hot and dry in their New Zealand summers, but they really can't have it all ways!

The large white scramblers and coloured ramblers are magnificent, as you can see.

 

 

Oh my, it does inspire you to have another go, and hope and hope that we get that long overdue good summer.  To dream

Margaret

 

Beautiful Red Pohutukawa

 

A link to A lovely song about a sunny kiwi christmas by a talented family friend 

Sweet Peas - The Sweet Smell of a Mammoth

The sweet peas are coming to an end.
The stems are getting shorter and there is more than a little late infestation of green fly, but they have been magnificent and as they say “owe us nothing".
I have always loved sweet peas. They have been an annual highlight and the first few blooms are always eagerly awaited and their scent inhaled with a pleasure and nostalgia.

Mammoth Mixed

We are the only nursery I know that sells sweet pea plants in individual sweet pea tubes and in individual colours.
Until this year we have always planted the left overs. By that I mean that after we have sold some thousands of sweet peas, the ones left are those that have lost a label, taken a knock or are an unfashionable colour, and so, in they go, supported by a few hazel branches.

This year Donald experimented with a variety bred especially for poly-tunnels and they were planted in an orderly row and wired up. As reported, they have been wonderful.
The variety is called Mammoth - not a pretty name. The plants are vigorous, the stems have been long and straight, the flowers have been huge and have kept coming, but the most wonderful thing has been the wonderful, pleasurable fragrance. The scent of these sweet peas meets you at the door and is a rare pleasure as you cut the blooms.
In water the flowers have lasted almost a week, a long spell for sweet peas , and we have had a big enough crop that we have been sending bunches to market. We will certainly be growing them again next year.

Honeymoon

Mammoth is, as I said, especially bred for indoor, poly tunnel cropping. Outdoors we are still recommending the old Spencer varieties as they are the hardiest and have the best colour range that we know.
My favourites have to be the lovely white Honeymoon, and the deep crimson Winston Churchill.
In addition to the Spencers we grow Old Spice mixed, smaller flowers, with a heady, almost tropical, spicy scent. We also grow a single old variety called Matucana. This has deep purple and red flushed flowers and the most remarkable scent of all.


Winston Churchill

Most folks in the north of the United Kingdom plant their Sweet Pea seed early spring. We often get them in late February/ March ..... but you can plant in autumn on the hope of an early start and early flowers. Always keep your seedlings up and away from mice; they seem to smell them a thousand yards away. Early spring means the day ends with a patrol of many mouse traps.

The seedlings are very hardy and do not need cosseting. However this past spring was so cold in April that it certainly put them back and they were looking very pinched for a while, before they grew away strongly.

Matacuna

Sweet peas love a rich soil and if you are organised enough to know where you will be planting them next year, then this an excellent time to dig a trench and fill it with as much homemade compost and animal manure as you can get your hands on. They will love the rich diet and will reward you with months of undiluted pleasure.