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.

Autumn Shrub Sale At Abriachan

SUPER SHRUB SALE - ONE WEEK ONLY
Tuesday 11th- Tuesday 18th September
£5 each or any 4 plants for £15 (Buy 3 get 1 free)

(Nursery Only Offer - No Mailorder Available For Offer)

I asked Don for a couple of shrub names to give a flavour of some of the shrubs available and got given this rather substantial list - so here we go, have a wee look, there is bound to be something to suit and plenty more at the Nursery

Viburnum bodnatense dawn

 

All good shrubs that do very well in Highland Gardens
Good autumn colour
Spirea firelight
Parotia persica

Two antipodeans
Prostrantera cuneata ... Australian hardy shrub
Pittosporum cuneata ... From New Zealand

Great variegated Hollies
Ilex Silver Queen
Ilex Northern Lights

Showy brooms
Cytisus Goldfinch
Cytisus hollandia

New Zealand hollies, great for coastal and windy gardens
Olearia macrodonta
Olearia haastii

Another two evergreens that are wonderful in windy and coastal gardens and flower all summer
Escallonia iveyi
Escallonia macrantha

And Beautiful summer flowering shrubs
Lavatera olbia rosea
Deutzia Pink Pom Pom
Weigelia Bristol Ruby
Weigelia florida variegata

And wonderful spring flowering shrubs
Ceonothus Concha …… A heavenly blue
Kolkwitzia amabilis

And a selection of Rhododendrons
Loved by butterflies
Buddleia Black Knight
Buddleia Loch Insh

Shrubs for winter flowering
Sarcocca confusa
Viburnum bodnatense dawn

Olearia macrodonta

Phew - Get in quick, the Great Shrub Sale only lasts for one week !

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

Opulence

Should I be using the word opulence, should it be abundance?

The dictionary tells me it is great wealth or luxuriousness  and I do feel this piece is about a luxuriance of flower and foliage.

 It is July and it has so far been a very wet summer, storms and grey skies.

However it has become a little warmer and plants have their heads up and are showing off their worth.

July always means roses, mock orange and campanulas but it also is my month of opulence.

We have been at Abriachan now for 29 years and each summer I am surprised that a plant that I planted; more in hope than wisdom; is suddenly a star and a major player on our summer stage.

One such, is a seedling New Zealand clematis, it now crowns a group of hazel trees for many weeks and is now substantial enough to be visible from the car park.

Rose pauls Himalayan musk, tumbling over a terrace and full of flower and fragrance. Is anything as nice as a the heady midsummer scent of roses?

 Rose Rambling Rector has grown steadily through a Alnus incana and is now a magnificent pillar of white. A truly breath-taking sight.

We also have a wonderfully vigorous Rosa Wickwar with attractive light grey-green leaves and just now crowned by a mass of single, creamy flowers with golden stamens, that are scenting the air.

Wickwar has some lovely floral trails , but to see it best you need to see it from above , as is often the case with plants such as roses and clematis that climb through trees.

Maybe we should think of a tree top walk!

But the star of this mid-summer has been native honeysuckle. I see it everywhere doing well, but we had a jaw dropping spectacle. One of our oaks had a curtain of honeysuckle, it must have been 40 ft high and it was broad and bright and truly magnificent.

Some sights you only see once in a gardeners life and this was one such.

I am currently reading about Monet’s gardening life, I believe he would have loved our curtains and pillars of midsummer opulence .

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