Benmore Botanic Garden

The second year of the HND/BSc at the Botanics has hit hard, and between the group presentations, endless Latin names, specialist project research, and revision there hasn't been much spare time to update the blog. I did, however, spend last spring and summer and even this fall visiting some pretty spectacular gardens in England, Scotland, and the United States. Eventually I will get around to sharing them here, but in an effort to be moderately timely let's start with one I went to last week: Benmore Botanic Garden.

Benmore is one of four gardens in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh portfolio, and as part of our class on managing and designing plant collections we popped over on the Dunoon ferry west of Glasgow for a couple days. Benmore is the wettest of the RBGE gardens, with more than three metres of rain each year, and the garden spreads up a steep mountain slope. The weather, topography, and sheer size of the trees (e.g., Sequoiadendron giganteum, or Giant Sequoia; and Pseudotsuga menziesii, Douglas Fir) in this collection make gardening there especially challenging, necessitating heavy machinery and skilled arborists.

The garden had a taxonomic layout until 1980s, when geographic areas were developed beginning with the Tasmanian Ridge, followed by the Bhutanese Garden, Chilean, and Japanese sections.

The garden is known for its fine collection of Rhododendron sp., and Magnolia sp., but in autumn the brilliantly colored Acer sp. steal the show.

The fernery, nestled into a gorge above a stream and grotto, was built in the 1870s by James Duncan, then owner of the estate. After Duncan's bankruptcy and sale of the estate, the fernery lay in disrepair until 2008, when it was sympathetically restored and reopened the next year. More information on the fernery and restoration is here. 

The combination of original stone gable ends and modern steel and glass roof is compelling and one of the nicest updates of a historical structure that I've seen. 

The Enkianthus campanulatus were a new discovery and stunning. 

 I like this photo because it's a pretty honest representation of what studying horticulture in Scotland is like: walking around an absolutely magical landscape...in the pouring rain. 

You'll get no complaints from me as the day it chucked down rain at Benmore the quality of light and fog on the mountainside made for some pretty good picture taking. And of course, all that rain makes for some of the lushest mosses I've ever seen. 

Finally, a little close-up of a lovely new-to-me tree, and one that's been a favorite through-line of several garden visits this autumn: the white-flowered Eucryphia. 

Samphire planet

Earlier this summer I wandered off Tyninghame Beach and found myself on another planet. A totally normal-looking beach gradually gave way to sticky mud flats dotted with stringy green algae. A few more steps in and strange green sticks grew straight from the mud. Soon I found myself surrounded by a completely unexpected and bizarrely delightful colony of marsh samphire, Salicornia europaea.

You may know samphire as a crunchy, salty vegetable often served with fish dishes. But samphire is also called glasswort, not because it glows like stained glass in the sun, which it does, but because when burned, ashes from the plant become soda ash, used for making glass.

I'd never seen samphire growing in the wild, and on this surreal mudflat in the setting sun it was spectacularly beautiful. As well as crunchy and salty and delicious.


My big debut: Filming in the glasshouses

This week a crew from ARTE, a French film company, was at the Botanics shooting a documentary on the garden. In preparation Pat and I cleaned up the Victoria lilies (Victoria amazonica, Victoria cruziana, and the hybrid created by combining the two, Victoria 'Longwood Hybrid') in the Plants and People glasshouse, removing spent buds and tattered leaves. We also took out a bunch of Eichhornia crassipes (water hyacinth) that was overcrowding the pond.

The Victorias are always a crowd favorite. At midsummer, when the day length is longest, the lily leaves grow to a whopping 2-3 meters. We're in the pond several times a week to remove the oldest leaves to give the young ones room to grow.

On Thursday the crew arrived. The charismatic presenter and Fiona, an indoor supervisor, got in the pond in waders for the shoot. Pat and I worked in the background of the shoot--my big film debut is me walking into the scene with the fishing net we use to collect removed plant material!

Fiona and the presenter fed the Victoria lilies with fertilizer balls Pat and I had made earlier in the week by mixing rubbish soil with blood, fish, bone, general-purpose granular fertilizer, and sodium nitrate, which provides the high dose of nitrogen needed to produce the largest possible leaves. It's basically like making mudpies--we mix everything in a wheelbarrow with water and then shape the muck into tennis ball shapes that are left to dry for several days. To feed the lilies one plunges a ball underwater, deep into the pot next to the root ball. It sounds simple, but every part of the plant is covered with incredibly sharp spines that create puncture wounds that are sore for days. I've already got scars up the back of my wrist from accidental contact whilst removing leaves.

The shoot was challenging as the crew spoke only French, but everyone got through and the pond looked great. I was particularly impressed that the whole thing was shot on a hand-held DSLR, with two extra crew members doing sound.

I'm not sure when the film is due out, but I look forward to seeing the glasshouse I've helped to care for this summer on film. The film is supposed to be released in several countries, including Australia and Canada, so I might even get to see it in English! And finally, one of my photos went out to the world today on the RBGE Press Twitter account: https://twitter.com/RBGEPress/status/634681309588258816

Rethinking red: Single color herbaceous borders at Floors Castle

Until recently, I had little interest in color-themed borders or even gardens (though I admit I've yet to visit perhaps the most famous example of this style, the White Garden at Sissinghurst). As a lover of unique color combinations, the idea of working within such a narrow palette held little appeal. However, a recent trip to Floors Castle, in the Scottish Borders, made me reconsider single-color gardens and opened my eyes to the possibilities that lie within manipulating tint, tone and shade in a narrow slice of the spectrum.

Floors Castle has a lovely nursery and retail plant center, and just adjacent are a series of gardens that begin with single-color borders in blue, red and pink/purple. When viewing each color, the other colors are hidden, and the effect of so many plants in one hue is dramatic. That in itself would be interesting, but upon closer inspection all sorts of individually compelling blooms reveal themselves, which make the borders work both in long view and close-up.

As with most creative pursuits, a little constraint can force greater ingenuity. The definition of "red" is pushed through its range of blue-red to yellow-red and everything in between, including my favorite terracotta, as in these gorgeous dahlias.

It was a typically overcast Scottish day, and I wonder if my response to this garden was so strong because I'm craving spice and heat in this summer that's felt like a winter to me--as I write this it's 35 degrees Fahrenheit warmer at my farm in Virginia than here in Edinburgh.

I do know that the cloudy sky really made the colors pop. I suspect the effect would have been more washed out in full-sun and less dramatic.

Until visiting Floors Castle, I wouldn't have been too excited about a "red border." But this is a single-color border done right, with enough variety to keep it intriguing, and it's fabulous. I only wish the plants would have been labeled in some inconspicuous way, as there were many I didn't know but would love to have in my own garden.

A Pentlands hike: Part two

After leaving the waterside we started to climb into the purple heather (Calluna vulgaris)-covered moors.

One of the nice things about being on a date with a man who studied wildlife and countryside management is that he told me all about not only the local wildlife but also how the landscape is managed. The heather is burned in patches, called muirburn in Scotland, to create ideal conditions for breeding grouse, which are then shot for sport by paying clients. The practice is said to increase grouse yields as post-burning, grouse eat the the nutritious young shoots of emerging heather and then seek shelter and breed in the taller patches.

It's a controversial practice, especially in such a class-conscious land as Britain. More details are in this article.

As we climbed higher up the first hill, the burned heather patches are clearly visible in this view north toward the Forth of Fife. The city of Edinburgh is behind that brown hill on the right.

Scottish Blackface sheep, the most common breed in the U.K., covered the Pentland Hills.

View to the south of the Pentlands, toward the Scottish Borders.

We finally crested the top of this chain of hills, and hiked the ridgetops of West Kip (1808 ft) and East Kip taking in incredible views into the valleys on either side and all the way out to the ocean. The wind was absolutely fierce, and after being nearly blown off a few summits we descended down through the heather again. In all we did 13 miles and saw a lot of neat stuff--and got back to the car just as the clouds returned and it started to rain. Now that's a perfect day of Scottish hillwalking!

A Pentlands hike: Part one

Saturday I set off on another hiking date, this time to the Pentland Hills south of Edinburgh. It was my first time in the Pentlands, and I was excited to explore this series of hills that forms the backdrop of the city.

It was the first weekend day of decent weather in what felt like months, and the landscape sparkled. Scotland is often cloudy, but when it's not there is a clarity to the light and air that is spectacular.

The hike began with a short road section, but soon enough we were off into the woods. Here's an excellent illustration of my arboroculture tutor's maxim, "Trees seal, they don't heal."

Border collies were the trail dogs of the day. I saw at least 10 before the hike was over, and each one made me miss hiking with my own black-and-white, four-legged companion back home in the U.S.

Below, Vicia cracca, or Tufted Vetch.

I had to peek over a rose-covered wall to get a better view of this darling cottage and garden, with a tractor parked in the drive. It looked like a Scottish incarnation of my farm in Virginia.

The path swung around a reservoir where serious-looking men were fly-fishing, and we continued around the water for a while before beginning to climb into the heather fields.

Up next: changing habitats with elevation and the view from the top.


British Tits and other wonders of natural history writing

As I walk to work before seven each morning, I pass scores of antique and second-hand book stores displaying treasures to make a botanist's heart beat fast.

There's one shop near the Botanics that has an ever-changing selection of natural history books, and this little collection caught my eye today. It's a good thing the shops aren't open on my way to work or I'd spend my paycheck before I even got it

Flora of Rosslyn Chapel and Roslin Glen

Yesterday I had a lovely day out that began with a visit to Rosslyn Chapel, a 15th century private chapel in Roslin, Midlothian.

In addition to it's fame from the DaVinci Code books and movie, the chapel is known for its intricate sandstone carvings. Every bit of the chapel, inside and out, is covered in detailed and imaginative sculpture depicting people and scenes from Celtic and Christian theology and the family history of the chapel's owners and craftsmen. But of most interest to me were the floral carvings, which were of a quantity and level of detail that I've not yet encountered. No photos were allowed inside, but there was still plenty to see on the chapel's exterior.

According to the interpretation, the carvers were inspired by the plants in nearby Roslin Glen. The carvings on the Victorian-era baptistry and organ loft include grape vines, roses, wood sorrel, ivy, daisies, and morning glories.

My favorite might have been this on the older part of the chapel: a hand holding a bunch of flowers.

Before the dreaded "chapel neck" could set in, my date and I left and set off outside the chapel on a hike down to Roslin Glen. The wildflowers were in full bloom, making for very pretty pictures and a chance to do a bit of mid-summer botanizing.

Native British orchid, still working on the I.D. but thinking Dactylorhiza fuchsii. Or maybe Dactylorhiza maculata or perhaps even a hybrid.

Mimulus guttatus, or monkeyflower, an alien invasive.

We ended our ramble near these beautiful young cows. The sun was doing magical things on the Pentland Hills, and a stunning evening drive took us to our well-deserved and delicious pub dinner at the Sun Inn in Dalkieth. Good company, a bit of art and history, some hiking, plants and nature capped off by great food made for a perfect day.

Perfectly simple: The Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder

The reason behind last week's venture to the top of the Palm House was check the sunshine recorder mounted on its roof. The irony of tracking hours of sunshine in Edinburgh does not escape me, but it's something staff at the Botanics do every day as part of the observations they collect for the Met Office, the U.K.'s national weather service.

You'd think there would be some sort of technologically sophisticated gadget to record this data, but the reality couldn't be further from that:

This is a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder, and in it's analog simplicity it's one of the most beautiful things I've seen at the Botanics. It is just a crystal sphere, held in place with two metal clips, positioned in front of a paper strip. Any sunlight hitting the ball is concentrated by the sphere and burns a mark on the paper behind it. By retrieving the paper each day and measuring the length of the marks one has a fairly accurate record of the day's sunlit hours. Or minutes--this is Edinburgh after all. Different-sized paper strips are used in summer, winter and around the equinoxes to allow for the changing altitude of the sun throughout the year.

Pretty simple, but it works perfectly.

Palm House panoramas

One of the best things about working at the Botanics is getting to spend time in all the places that are off limits to visitors. On Friday I climbed with a coworker to the top of the Temperate Palm House, Britain's tallest glasshouse. The long view stretched from the extinct volcano of Arthur's Seat, to the Craigs, on up the Royal Mile all the way to Edinburgh Castle and beyond, with the garden and glasshouses laid out at my feet.

The extent of the display and non-public back-up glasshouses was pretty impressive when viewed from this height. The Victorian Tropical Palm House is in the foreground. It was built in 1834 and is not only the oldest glasshouse at the Botanics, it's the oldest in Edinburgh.

Below, a closer view of Arthur's Seat, the big land form on the left horizon, all the way up to Edinburgh Castle at the very right edge of the frame. Two public glasshouses, built in the 1960s, are in the foreground.

Edinburgh Castle with a bit of the blue Pentland Hills further to its right, with the Azalea lawn in the middle distance.

National Collection: Delphinium elatum at Regent's Park, London

During my trip to London I spent a lot of time outside in parks and gardens, soaking up as much sun and warmth as I could. I visited Regent's Park for the first time, mostly to see the roses in the Queen Mary's Garden. But that's a post for another day. Right now I want to share another part of the park and some of the most unreal-looking blooms I've seen growing outdoors:

“Encourage the propagation and conservation of cultivated plants in the British Isles; encourage and conduct research into cultivated plants, their origins, their historical and cultural importance and their environments; and encourage the education of the public in cultivated plant conservation.”
— Plant Heritage

Regent's Park holds full National Collection status for this planting of Delphinium elatum hybrids that have received the Award of Garden Merit (AGM) from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). That's a lot of pomp, circumstance and acronym for my non-British readers, but what it boils down to is that the National Collection scheme is one way Plant Heritage, a charity also known as the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and & Gardens, seeks to:

AGM plants are simply plants approved by the RHS, the nation's (and some argue, the world's) leading horticultural organization dedicated to "excellence in the science, art and practice of horticulture." As a student of horticulture at the Botanics, my curriculum is based on RHS-recommended practices, and many an hour was spent studying from their fantastic books and Web site. The AGM is basically a seal of approval, and is awarded by the RHS only after extensive trialing by nurserymen, qualified horticulturists and academic institutions.

But back to this special collection of Delphinium elatum...

I don't think I've ever seen flowers quite this blue, unless perhaps on Meconopsis betonicifolia (Himalayan Blue Poppy). As blue as those little poppies are, their scale is tiny compared to these inflorescences that were several feet long. True blues are rare in the plant world, and 'Langdon's Pandora' grabbed my attention from across the park.

The plants and their blooms were pristine, but I found the staking very distracting. I know staking is necessary with such overbred, top-heavy blooms, and it was clearly done in a neat and professional manner, but I wonder if there's a way to provide more subtle support. As a start I'd use darker-colored stakes, to better blend with the foliage than the blonde bamboo, and I'd make the stakes shorter as the tops of them weren't being used (although it's possible they're long to add another layer of jute twine to support the blooms).

Last winter in horticultural practices we learned how to create birch supports for what would, when spring came, be a large clump of Delphinium. The birch branches were inserted in the ground, bent over, and the twiggy tops interwoven to form a cube-like armature. Now, at the height of summer, the plants have grown large enough to totally obscure the support while remaining tidy and upright.

I have a natural aversion to plants that have to be corseted and trussed to stay upright, but as this is a display collection in a public park, grown without the natural support and disguise provided in a mixed border, I can almost see the justification.

It was nice to spend some time with a genus of plant that I normally don't pay much mind but I so strongly associate with British gardening. As gaudy as these plants are, there's no denying they are impressive examples of both breeding and cultivation.

A horticulturist's ramblings around London

The week after school ended I couldn't stand the cold and grey "summer" weather of Edinburgh a second longer, so I jumped on a fast train to London. In four and a half hours I walked out of King's Cross station into sun and warmth.

I did all my favorite London things and explored some new neighborhoods, walking up to 15 miles a day. I got day-of tickets to the Alexander McQueen retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which I always regretted missing when it was at the Met in NYC in 2011. The queue was worth the wait---it was hands-down the best museum or gallery show I've ever seen and filled up my well of artistic inspiration, which had been running dangerously low after what turned out to be a very challenging (but very successful) first year of school.

Despite being in the middle of a huge city, the horticultural world was well represented by interesting plants and installations. Here are a few that caught my eye:

I ducked into the Anthropologie store on Regent Street and found the largest green wall I've yet seen. That it was in a retail space was thrilling. This wall was designed by Biotecture and installed in 2009. It is 160 square meters, spans the four floors of the store, and the plants are hydroponically watered with collected rainwater.

But it wasn't without it's faults. Some of the plants had made a run for the sun, and escaped the wall (a look I actually love, but can't be good for the building). There were significantly empty areas of the wall in which the plants had failed to thrive (at right), which is the biggest problem I have with most green walls. I have never seen one in which all the plants are looking good at the same time. It seems green walls require frequent maintenance to not only keep them in bounds, but also to replace dead and failing plants. This level of care and impermanence equates green walls, in my mind, with cut or potted flower displays that aren't meant to last. And so I wonder just how "green' green walls really are.

An amazingly lush hydrangea border, just coming into bloom, stretching the entire length of the Victoria and Albert Museum courtyard.

The naturalistic planting trend was still in full effect all over the city, and this raised bed outside a hotel did it particularly well. The feathery meadow-effect planting softened the severe metal and stone of the building's facade.

In Hyde Park, at right, a strip of sown wildflowers glowed in the sun.

My favorite window display of the whole trip was so subtle I walked right past it before realizing that what I'd seen was actually a garden/farm stand done in fabric. I loved everything about it including how the fabric vegetables played off the different types of wood and the gleaming metal tools.

At left, a plea from a hell strip planting. Above, a nice display in the Liberty store that I may recreate some day.

I thought this planter design made from painted concrete blocks and a variety of succulents was nice and easily reproducible at home. And finally, one of the nicest things about London is one can toss a picnic rug on the ground and spend an evening watching other people enjoying a little bit of nature in a great big city.

Happy Independence Day

For the first time in my life I've not celebrated one of my favorite holidays: July 4. I love this day because it occurs in my favorite season and usually involves the year's first ripe homegrown tomatoes, sweet corn, sweat, grilled meats, bikinis, large bodies of water, watermelon, and finally, fireworks.

Being a new resident of the country from which America broke means I keep my patriotism on this holiday pretty quiet. This year my homage to my home country is simply this bouquet of flowers I grew on my plot at school and here at home. That Ammi majus will be as close as I come to fireworks this year, but I think it captures the spirit. Happy Fourth of July to my American expat friends and everyone back home.

Titan Arum blooms at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

The Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh bloomed Saturday after 12 years of careful cultivation and a few feverish weeks of tracking bud development. It's the first time a Titan Arum has bloomed in Scotland, and a huge victory for the dedicated staff at the Botanics who nurtured the corm from the size of an orange to 153.9kg, the heaviest on record.

I made it back from London just in time to see it last night, on the second day of its two-day peak bloom.

I queued with the public for an hour and 15 minutes in order to experience the spectacle from an outside visitor perspective instead of slipping through the back door waving my staff pass. One of the most unexpectedly interesting aspects of studying at the Botanics is beginning to understand how nonhorticulturists experience plants, and how to get more people involved with them who wouldn't otherwise be interested. The Titan Arum is a perfect example of how, amazingly, a plant can get so many people fired up about a botanical phenomenon. Thousands of people stood in line, some for more than two hours, to spend four minutes or less with this massive inflorescence. And they were excited.

The Titan Arum Army of Botanics staff, students and volunteers did a great job of making the queue organized, fast, and fun. They worked the line, handing out informational pamphlets and chatting with visitors about the plant and other work done at the Botanics in an excellent display of community outreach, education and PR. There was even a three-piece band playing sprightly tunes for entertainment.

It's no surprise that, like much today in the world of science and conservation, botanical gardens struggle to make enough profit to employ the skilled gardeners who tend them, let alone dedicate resources to research and plant and habitat conservation. Rock star plants, such as the blooming Titan arum, are one way to attract more people into the gardens. With a £5/person charge to enter the glasshouses (the general Botanics grounds are still, miraculously, free to enjoy), these experiences could significantly affect the garden's bottom line, while at the same time spreading horticultural knowledge and enthusiasm. Who knows, maybe the world's next great botanists were amongst the children who stood, open-mouthed and wondering, at the eight foot-tall flower that looked like something come to life from their picture books?