2017: Where to even begin?

I've been trying to think of a word that sums up 2017. The first few that spring to mind are uncertainty, change, exhaustion, and adaptation. A few on a slightly more positive note would be wonder, gratitude, and love. In short, there is no one word to encompass the monumental life achievements and transitions of the past year, along with their highs and lows. I am happy to have made it through relatively intact...and looking forward to 2018. 

Last year's review post featured lots of exotic foreign travel and and world-class gardens. In 2017 I was too busy to leave the British Isles. I finished my horticulture degree, learned to drive a manual car on the left side of the road and passed my U.K. driving test. I got married, obtained my next U.K. visa, moved to south-east England, bought a car, re-adapted to life in the country, and found and began my first professional horticultural job. 

Mixed in with all the life groundwork above were some truly beautiful moments, the finest of which was without a doubt my wedding. There were other highlights including a class outing to the Victorian fernery on the isle of Bute, a trip to Broadwoodside garden in June, a visit from my parents in July, and my first trip to RHS Wisley, which helped assuage the pain of missing Edinburgh's Botanics. A much-needed trip to London this past week topped up my depleted reserves of art, culture, and delicious food. Even simpler pleasures were time spent walking along the Water of Leith in Edinburgh, spotting kingfishers and otters. I walked miles a day in that beautiful city, taking in all I could before I knew I'd have to leave. 

Now that I am starting to stabilize into the next phase of my life, I plan on spending 2018 exploring as much of southern England as I can and visiting the many famous gardens planted in this warmer and sunnier part of Britain. I'm looking forward to wearing shorts and sandals for the first time in this country, fingers crossed. I hope to take advantage of living almost within sight of France and generous vacation time to do more trips to the Continent. Along with my husband, I am excited to plan, plant, and tend our first garden--the seeds of which were my favorite Christmas present. Most important, I'd like to gather my strength to plan the next step in my brand-new horticultural career, in which I want to combine my technical gardening skills with my writing and photography to teach people about plants. 

Wherever you are, thanks for reading along, and have a wonderful new year. 

RHS Wisley: A Tom Stuart-Smith garden and thoughts on innovation

I've been a Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) member since moving to Britain, and I treasure their monthly magazine, The Garden, as an exemplar of horticultural journalism. However, I'd yet to visit one of their four major gardens (soon to be five when RHS Bridgewater opens in 2019). But today I was on an errand in Hampshire and realized I was very close to the RHS flagship garden, Wisley. Of course I stopped in, flashing my membership card and gaining free entry for myself and my companion. 

On this clear and cold Sunday in November it seemed that every London family had chosen Wisley to exercise their children. The garden had the feel of a theme park totally overrun with strollers and overly-cautious city parents. "We don't touch red berries," warned one hipster dad to his daughter, probably setting her up for a lifetime of soft-fruit aversion. 

The garden surrounding the large glasshouse complex was less populated than other areas of the property, and it was pure joy to wander amongst the plants under a clear blue sky. This area was designed by Tom Stuart-Smith, one of Britain's most well-regarded garden designers. I've always wanted to see this garden, and as I am now working in a Tom Stuart-Smith-designed garden I'm particularly keen to experience more of his work. I enjoyed pointing out plants at Wisley that I tend every day and noticing stylistic similarities between the two properties. 

I am also particularly interested in the management of gardens in the style of Tom Stuart-Smith, which are designed for four-season interest. Traditional herbaceous perennial management has dictated that all plants are cut to the ground in autumn, leaving bare earth over winter. The newer thinking--led by the New Perennial et al. movement--advocates growing herbaceous perennials that "live well and die well," in the words of Piet Oudolf, the Dutch master who popularized the style. This means growing plants that look good even as they turn brown and crispy, and that are able to stand up through winter providing not only visual interest but also food and shelter for animals, birds, and insects. 

In my nascent professional horticulture career I've come across more than one gardener who still believes all herbaceous material must be cut down, removed, and the garden "put to bed" for winter under a thick layer of compost. I've no truck with the compost layer--more compost is usually always a good thing--but I do believe that gardens designed in the style Tom Stuart-Smith uses should be left standing as long as possible into winter. On the flip side, though, I do understand that time, staffing, weather, and seasonal changes dictate what happens when in large gardens. Sometimes there are simply too many other jobs in an already packed calendar to delay the autumn chop. What's most interesting to me is the intersection between what designers are creating and what boots-on-the-ground gardeners believe is the best way to manage these same gardens, even if they aren't actually able to put their knowledge into practice. I notice a disconnect here, as I do in many areas of horticulture. The "newer" ideas about garden design and management--including new best practices backed up by scientific research--so very rarely make it into everyday gardening at many established properties. 

For example, this summer I interviewed for a gardener job at a historic garden run by the largest gardening charity in England. On my walkaround I noticed American skunk cabbage, Lysichiton americanus, growing along a stream that ran through the property. Lystichon americanus is a bog-dwelling North American native that was introduced to Britain in 1901 as an ornamental. Like so many ornamental plant introductions, Lystichon really liked its new territory--so much so that it's run wild, outcompeting native British plants in boggy and marshy areas. Lystichon is now considered an "invasive non-native species" subject to EU regulation, according to the RHS, which does not recommend that the plant be grown in Britain. At Dawyck Botanic Garden, part of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh portfolio, all the Lystichon was dug up and removed from the garden once gardeners realized that even with frequent deadheading to remove seeds before they could spread through the watercourse, the plant was still making its way downstream:

"American skunk-cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) has also been removed following its recognition nationally as an invasive non-native species of significant concern. The plants at Dawyck were popular for their spring flowers and grew well for many years...Dawyck has taken the lead on the removal of this plant and will look forward to replanting new species in the areas once occupied by the skunk cabbage." --RBGE

And yet the gardener who was interviewing me for this job openly scoffed at the idea that Lystichon could ever be a problem.  

All this to say, I wonder how best to disseminate new ideas about gardening out to professional gardeners, particularly when many still have "old-school" attitudes rooted in Britain's Victorian horticultural glory days. I wonder how much change will really happen, outside of botanical and research gardens such as the RHS, until that old guard returns to the nitrogen cycle. 

Anyway, I would love to know the management strategy used at Wisley to care for such a large area (two hectares) of herbaceous perennials. I know similar gardens use hedge cutters or even mowers to take everything off in one fell swoop in late winter--eliminating much tedious and hand-numbing secateur work. If anyone is reading from Wisley or Tom Stuart-Smith's team is reading, please let me know what you do so I can make better management decisions going forward. 

Great Comp: A late-season surprise

On Monday--before the sky turned apocalyptic orange from Saharan dust and Portuguese smoke--I visited Great Comp garden in Sevenoaks, Kent. I was familiar with Great Comp through the work of its curator, William Dyson, who grows and sells his extensive collection of salvias in a nursery onsite. As an RHS partner garden, entry is free for members in September and October. 

It's getting late in the season for garden visiting, and Great Comp was quiet and almost empty. It was just my luck as on this 70-degree October day the bright sun really brought out the best in fall colors, ornamental grasses, and hundreds of salvias of all shapes and sizes. 

The garden is criss-crossed with meandering paths that lend a real sense of discovery to its exploration. It also features "ruins" throughout that add some height to the otherwise flat site and provide vantage points from which to look down upon the garden. They reminded me of the ruins at Chanticleer, though at Great Comp they look less theatrically contrived and almost plausibly original. 

I love photographing gardens in autumn, when they are so full of warm colors, texture and senescing beauty. One of my favorite views was of the phlomis seedheads, above, left standing in counterpoint to the tightly clipped shrub behind it. 

I also enjoyed an extensive area of ornamental grasses. Their seedheads swished around at head height and made walking among them feel like an adventure. Throughout the garden late-season stars such as asters and dahlias brightened up the browning foliage. 

I've always liked salvias, but I came away from Great Comp with an even greater appreciation for their range of color, size, and form. My favorite of the day was Salvia bullulata 'Pale Form," grown in a container above. It's one of those rare true-blue plants that have my heart. 

In all I was unexpectedly surprised by Great Comp. The garden is big and detailed enough to hold your attention for a couple of hours, and it is very neat and well-maintained. The plantings look healthy and vibrant, even as we stand on the doorstep of winter, and are artfully arranged with attention to form and texture as well as color. There is a lot to discover in this garden, and I look forward to returning in other seasons. 

Great Dixter: The right garden at just the right time

Tonight I'd like to share a few photos from Great Dixter, which I visited two days ago on a quick trip to East Sussex. I didn't have my big camera and lenses with me, so these photos are more like sketches, quickly snapped with my iphone as I let the garden wash over me. Right now I don't feel the need to analyze what I saw--goodness knows that's been done to death with a garden as influential and famous as Dixter. So instead just enjoy what caught my eye free from Latin names or any plant names at all, in the spirit of Christopher Lloyd.*

This was exactly the garden I needed at exactly this time. It's been a challenging summer with more than a fair share of major life transitions to navigate, and I'd be lying if I said my faith in gardening and what I love about it hasn't been put to the test. Lately all the work and risk-taking required to earn a science degree and pull off a mid-life career change in a foreign country have seemed like questionably sane decisions and left me wondering if I wouldn't have been better off staying in America and sticking with an uninspiring but profitable line of work I didn't love. 

But walking around Great Dixter on Saturday I felt a tiny bit of joy tiptoeing back into my broken heart. Just a bit, as here and there and then everywhere I looked were planting combinations and colors and arrangements that went right to my artist's eye, reminding me of how much I love this living/looking and don't want to do anything else. When I visited Great Dixter in July a year ago, the garden registered as clashing and in some ways garish. But this year the bright and happy late-summer flowers, all tumbled together in a shouty riot, were just what I needed when I'm having a hard time registering anything more subtle. The garden reached out beyond the confines of paths and planting beds, embracing me and forcing me to feel its September exultation. Great Dixter cut right through my darkness, letting light spill in.

This weekend was an important lesson in both garden making and garden appreciation. Like any art, we look at gardens through a scrim of our own moods, judgements, and preconceived notions. There is no way to control these elements in our viewers when we make a garden, just like it's impossible to look at any garden objectively. Our personal histories, memories, proclivities and dislikes are always standing next to us, staring out at the garden through our eyes.

Some gardeners take a widest-net approach, creating gardens to appeal to the most middle-of-the-road tastes and expectations. Other gardeners follow their own stars, not caring how off-putting or ungardenlike their visions are to an untold number of people. It's into this later group that Great Dixter falls. I am so glad I got to see it when I was feeling sad and doubting, when it reminded me of how much beauty and never-ending inspiration is to be found in my new vocation, and how vital it is that I keep the faith just a little longer. 

*Posted in the Great Dixter nursery shed: 

This post is dedicated to R.B., who stands with me in the garden, bright and dark. 

True blues

Last month Japanese reserchers announced they'd genetically engineered the first truly blue flowers by modifying Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium) with genes from Canterbury Bells (Campanula medium) and butterfly pea (Clitoria terniata).

First genetically modified blue chrysanthemums. Image by Naonobu Noda/NARO.

Blue flowers are rare, occurring on fewer than 10 percent of the world's 280,000 plant species, and they come about by a complex interaction of colour pigments called anthocyanins, growing conditions, and ambient light. What's more, the plants that produce "blueish" flowers aren't common in the commercial horticultural or floristry trades. The Japanese researchers claim their discovery means we could some day see blue roses in wedding bouquets or blue carnations lining the garden path. 

Australian Bluebell, Billardiara fusiformis, photographed in Australia

Why anyone would want to breed a flower that looks like one of those horrible dyed jobs languishing in cellophane at the supermarket is beyond me. I prefer to appreciate my blues as nature made them, even if they are considered some variation of pink or purple according to the RHS flower colour chart. There's something special about blue flowers, and their relative scarcity makes them that much more affecting.

The photos in this post show some of my favorite blue flowers as I've encountered them. There are just few enough to make each sighting special, which is something that I suspect will be lost if more commercially available blue flowers flood the market. 

Field forget-me-not, Myosotis arvensis, photographed in Scotland

This spring I spent some time photographing the Himalayan blue poppy (Meconopsis 'Slieve Donard')  at the Botanics, and as each visitor turned the path to see them I heard audible gasps. If blue flowers are more common, will they elicit the same response? I doubt it. 

Meconopsis 'Slieve Donard' at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

Brunnera macrophylla 

Corydalis flexuosa 'Balang Mist' 

Muscari azureum

Borago officinalis

There's no need to get too worked up yet, though, as genetically modified plants are still banned in the E.U. Given the rising concern about genetic modification in horticultural plants, spurred on by this year's orange petunia kerfuffle, I suspect GM chrysanthemums will not be welcome here any time soon, true blue or not.

Culross Palace: A 17th century garden

From an au courant contemporary garden let's travel back in time to 17th century Dunfermline, just across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. Culross "Palace" is a merchant's home built between 1597 and 1611 by the Laird of Carnock, Sir George Bruce. Sir Bruce pioneered undersea mining, sinking a shaft into the Firth to extract coal. His home at Culross is one of the most interesting spots I've visited in Scotland, with a bit of glamour added by the gorgeous spirits of Sam Heaughan and Caitriona Balfe, who've filmed Outlander scenes there. In addition to Sir Bruce and big-screen bonafides, there's also a recreated 17th century garden that climbs the southern-facing slope behind the house. 

Culross Palace is now a National Trust for Scotland property, and researchers analyzed literature and illustrations from the early 17th century to piece together how the garden may have looked then. 

For much of time gardens have not just been used for beauty and relaxation. They were larders, general stores, and pharmacies providing food, materials, and medicines. The garden grew plants that were used for dying, making cosmetics and soap, brewing, and strewing herbs that were spread on floors to smell nice and keep pests at bay. What resonated with me about Culross is that it's a useful garden in addition to being attractive.  

In addition to herbs, the garden includes many edible plants including mulberries, quince, medlars, and figs as well as old varieties of apples and pears. 

I was struck by this inspired combination of hollyhock and berries. Whether it was intentional or not I am liking this idea of incorporating traditionally ornamental plants to make bolder aesthetic statements in the production garden. 

The garden also includes other more unusual edible plants. John Gerrard's 1597 Herball, which informed the recreation of the garden, tells of vegetables that would be unfamiliar to many gardeners in 2017. Skirret, in the Apiaceae family and a relative of the parsnip, is a vegetable grown for its white roots, eaten boiled or fried. Scorzonera is a perennial plant in the Asteraceae, or sunflower family. It's also used as a root vegetable and is sometimes referred to as black salsify. 

I loved these little shelters almost completely overgrown by the blowsy late summer garden. How lovely to sit inside and have ripe red currants so easily at hand! 

And how can I forget the icing on the Culross cake: Scots Dumpy chickens!

As a chicken aficionado and former flockmaster I was thrilled to finally meet a breed I'd read so much about. The Scots Dumpy has a semi-lethal gene that shortens its leg length, creating a characteristic slow, waddling gait. Some claim that the shorter-legged birds don't wander as far from the homestead or croft as more lanky chickens, and that this limited movement makes their meat more tender and succulent. 

They're not the most attractive breed to me--I like my animals well-proportioned--but it was really nice to spend some time with a small flock that reminded me of the one I used to have, broody hens and all. 

Broadwoodside Part 3: The Courtyards

After leaving the House Field and walking back toward the South Garden, we ducked through a large stableyard door and into the Upper Courtyard. 

This garden is structured on a grid of paving stones interspersed with lawn and square planting beds containing Acer platanoides trained into standards. I especially liked that each tree was underplanted with a different evergreen species. An aviary--built around another Acer--is the centerpiece, and on this day it was home to this bright-looking African grey parrot.

Beneath an open shed is a fantastic picnic area painted one of my favorite colors and festooned with Wisteria. It would be a lovely space not only for relaxing but also for outdoor projects requiring open air under roof. I find these types of spaces incredibly useful in a garden, and miss the ones I had on my farm even though using them usually meant clearing the area of snakes, dead and alive, before entering. I am sure I will enjoy living in a country where that isn't as much of an issue!

The tour carried on into another courtyard, through a beautiful ochre building dating to 1680, and out into the Hall Garden, which was another of my favorite spaces. It was full of frothy, delicate plants that looked as though they just been poured into the container created by the building and surrounding hedges.

Brunnera, Anthriscus, Rosa rugosa, Nepeta, Phlomis, Aquilegia, Geraniums and ferns all joyfully tumbled beneath pollarded Tilia creating the effect of a stylized woodland glade. I loved it. 

Behind the buildings was the Orchard, where the only fruit in sight was cast bronze. What I loved most about this area was evidence of the chickens that must very happily forage there. There were many other treats to be found in this garden and further afield on the estate, including a temple and pond. I'll leave you to discover those for yourself, and end our tour here. 

Broadwoodside is one of the creatively inspiring gardens I've visited. I appreciate its domestic scale and came away full of ideas I'd like to implement when I have a large garden again. I like the use of art and color throughout the space and the way the owners' sense of humor and wit translates through their choices in the garden. Gardening, like any art, is a very personal form of expression and one at which Broadwoodside excels. I can't wait to visit some day in the future and see how the garden continues to evolve. 

Broadwoodside Part 2: South Garden and the House Field

Following the path around the ochre tower one enters the South Garden. What I like about this garden is how domestic it feels, and yet it looks so stylish with excellent use of color, witty art installations, and simple but repeated plantings that form a rhythm along the path. It doesn't hurt that it faces a bucolic pasture that housed, on that day, two stunning white horses that were kicking up their heels as if on command to frolic.

I'm not usually fond of purple smokebush (Cotinus coggygria). I suspect it's because for the five years I lived near Washington, D.C. I had to walk past a solitary, unhealthy, and pathetically maintained specimen going in and out of my flat each day. I itched to put it out of its misery, but lacking that agency I just let it sour me on the whole genus. I keep trying to come around, but its slow going. This garden is probably the first in which I found myself enjoying Cotinus, most likely because it is well-maintained and so effectively used as a dark accent along the walk. The perfectly chosen and contrasting blue on the posts also goes a long way toward my enjoyment of the Cotinus. Imagine the image below without the blue posts and Lutyens bench at the far wall. Not nearly as effective, right?

Further into the South Garden is a very inviting patio and a few pieces of art that I really enjoyed. I always like a big tree trunk repurposed as landscape art (a la David Nash), and this elm with its golden sphere hits the spot. Once again notice the color work here--that sphere picking up the tones in the ochre building. Beautiful. Cover either the sphere or the building with your finger and see what happens to the composition. 

I also loved these mirrored portholes making a feature out of what is potentially a mechanical eyesore. They looked especially nice covered in raindrops. 

From the South Garden one passes through this gate on the way to the House Field. The stone plinths beneath the urns read "Going to" on the left and "the Dogs" on the right--a joke that didn't reveal itself until I found the pet cemetery in the far corner of the field. 

Looking back toward the house I failed to see the point of the House Field. I suspect it may have been a timing issue, as I've seen photos of the bed by the wall filled with bright red blooming Crocosmia. Again it's not a favorite plant but it makes a strong statement when flowering. I really couldn't tell what was going on with that bed between the two mown areas. It had a few little blooms but mostly just looked like a weed patch.

Another view of the South Garden shows a hint of its borrowed landscape. This spot was one of my favorites at Broadwoodside, possibly because I feel most at home in places with long countryside views. What can I say other than I'm a typical Homo sapiens with an evolutionary bias toward the savanna--just like Capability Brown! 

I'll leave you to follow that link for some fascinating reading and when I return we'll head into the courtyards for Broadwoodside: Part 3.  

Broadwoodside Part 1: Entrance and Walled Garden

On June 4 Broadwoodside, a private garden in the small village of Gifford, opened for the National Garden Scheme Open Gardens. For one day a year the public is invited to see the the garden that Anna and Robert Dalrymple and their gardener have created over the past 17 years from a derelict farmstead. 

Broadwoodside has received lots of positive attention from horticultural publications far greater than mine, which you can read about here, so I'm loathe to repeat those stories here. Instead I'd rather write about what Broadwoodside actually looked like on this particular day, and how it felt to be within it. 

The garden is entered up a simple mown grass path through a meadow interplanted with trees and roses. After having worked so hard at my own farm to maintain mulch circles around trees that were essentially planted in a hayfield, I would like to embrace the relative ease of this cultivation technique. I like the casualness of this approach as it feels like the beginning of an adventure into a private space, which of course it is. If you couldn't tell it from the artwork displayed around the entrance meadow, it becomes clear when one passes through this garden gate that what lies ahead will be a creative and whimsical space. 

Through the gate one immediately enters a small vegetable garden. It's not really enough space to grow anything on a scale I'd like, and not as lush as the surrounding borders, but I appreciate the nod to the walled garden's practical origins.

The rest of the garden is an unusual mix of formal and casual as a rectangular pond edged with willow (Salix) provides the structural core around loose mixed borders backed by espaliered fruit trees growing on the walls. The willow pond was very much a "look at me" feature in this garden, and it felt like a space to pass through instead of a space to be lived in or even one that would invite much pause. I suppose the interest lies in the ever-changing Salix, which is cut each year and then allowed to grow up to nine feet tall over summer, effectively creating a room within a room and an area that felt a bit disconnected from the lush herbaceous borders around it. 

I enjoyed the view from a little bench tucked into the corner, below.

So often herbacious borders are viewed from one direction--outside looking in--and this perch provided the unique vantage point of being within the border. 

Next, we'll travel deeper into the garden and see some of my favorite bits. 

The beauty of antique plant catalogues

I just finished a late-Victorian garden design for a class. Part of my research included reading primary sources, such as William Robinson's The English Flower Garden, and digging up antique nursery catalogues to determine which plants and their varieties were available and popular in the late 1800s. 

In the RBGE library, one of my happy places on Earth, I found a catalog from the Veitch nursery. According to the Vietch Family History site, in 1771 a 19-year old Scot named John Veitch traveled to England and by 1808 had begun a nursery. John's son, James, and his son grew the nursery and purchased its Chelsea location in 1853. The dynasty carried on through the height of the Victorian plant collecting craze, with the nursery sending 23 collectors around the globe. These plant hunters returned with many of the specimens you'd recognize in a British garden today. One such treasure is the beautiful Davidia involucrata, located in China by Ernest Wilson. Despite being shipwrecked on the way home to England, Wilson managed to save the Davidia seeds. The Veitches were eventually responsible for introducing 1281 plants which were either previously unknown or newly bred varieties. Horticulture would not be the same without this impressive family. 

What impresses me just as much as their story is the beauty of their nursery catalogues, which are illustrated with detailed engravings and, in the late 1800s, very few colour images. In today's era of almost-instant digital photography and computer-aided layouts, the idea of engraving a catalogue is mind-boggling.

I am particularly drawn to these images of gardening tools, which are so beautifully composed that I'd happily hang them on my wall as art. 

I also enjoy this ad for the brand-new 'Frogmore Selected' tomato, though as I am used to growing 7-foot tall tomatoes outdoors with barely any attention at all, their meticulous indoor cultivation in Britain still strikes me as odd. The testimonials below the images are from the leading horticultural publications of the day, including Joseph Paxton and friend's 'Gardeners' Chronicle' and William Robinson's 'The Garden,' two magazines I've spent countless hours investigating during my studies at RBGE. 

This ad reminds me of one of my favorite watercolours by Eric Ravilious, 'The Greenhouse: Cyclamen and Tomatoes' (1935), which is now in the care of the Tate gallery. Clearly Ravilious too was moved by the beauty of full-to-bursting glasshouse.

A graft "failure" on Princes Street

I was on an after dinner walk down Princes Street, just below the castle, admiring the fallen cherry petals that were carpeting the garden with pink. I love ornamental cherries as they remind me of the five years I lived in Washington, D.C., where they famously circle the Tidal Basin.

This night, though, I was brought to a stop when I saw two very different blooms on one of the trees. "That ain't right!" was my first thought as I traced the branch back to the trunk to investigate. 

Turns out I'd found a textbook example of a graft "failure" in this ornamental cherry (most likely Prunus serrulata 'Kwanzan'). 

Though it is not essential to their success, Kwazan cherries are sometimes grafted onto other cherry rootstock, as you can see in the photo above where there is a grafting scar right below the main branches at the top of the trunk. But notice there is a stout branch going off to the left, right below the graft union. 

That branch belongs to the rootstock and is the source of our white-flowered blooms intermingling with the fluffy double pinks.

I also see a branch scar right below this branch, suggesting that at some point someone noticed the rootstock was trying to take over the graft and pruned it out. But in testament to the vigor of most roostocks, this one shot out another branch, which you can see blooming today. I know it's technically a horticultural "mistake," but I can't help but admire the tenacity of this rootstock and the delightful combination of two very different blooms on one tree. It makes me think about the many years of human cultivation, selection, and breeding that took a cherry like this white, more wild-flowered type and turned it into a confection named 'Kwanzan.'

Portrait of a pear

One of my favorite trees at the Botanics is in bloom. I've been visiting recently trying to take its portrait, but the grey weather hasn't been cooperating. Then last weekend the clouds broke for a few minutes and I got the sun for which I hoped. 

This is Pyrus korshinskyi, the Kazhak pear. It is native to Kyrghystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, but it seems quite at home in Edinburgh. Unfortunately this tree is critically endangered in its native habitat because of overgrazing damage by livestock and harvesting. 

This particular tree at the Botanics is listed on the Tree Register of the British Isles as the largest Kazhak pear in cultivation. 

I especially love the upright habit of its gnarled, lichen-covered branches and they way it seems to lift its blossoms skyward. It is truly spectacular and a rare tree that some day I hope to raise in my own garden. 

Spring cleaning

It's been good weather for getting a start on the garden. Sweet peas are planted, herb and lettuce seeds sown. It felt like the right time to give my secateurs a spring tune-up. A light scrub with fine steel wool and white spirits removes any accumulated sap or rust. Then I sharpened each pair with a diamond sharpener. Ready for duty. 

Return of the sun: First day of spring

The sun has finally climbed high enough that for the first time since last autumn my front garden is getting some direct sun. It only lasts a little while, and is usually interrupted by skudding dark clouds (or hail, or snow, or sleet, or icy rain, all of which we've had this week). But in late March, after another challenging Edinburgh winter, I will happily take what I can get--even if it is only a few minutes that light up the awakening garden and give me hope that brighter times are on the way. 

Spring comes to the Botanics

In a break between classes yesterday I took a walk around the Botanics. My goal was to see if one of my favorite spring flowers, Pulsatilla vulgaris, was yet blooming. However, along the way to the rock garden I found so many beautiful plants that I had to share. 

First up is the amazing Corylopis sinensis var. calvescens, a late-winter yellow-flowering shrub that in my book beats Fosythia any day. This Chinese native, as you could probably have guessed from the name, is sweetly scented and its profusion of pendant racemes make quite a vision. It's a good-sized shrub, but if you're lacking in garden space the smaller-statured Corylopis pauciflora is just as pretty on a miniature scale. 

As I entered the rock garden I was thrilled to see that one of my favorite spring bulbs, Narcissus cyclamineus, was out in full force. It's severely reflexed perianth is the key to its species name, as it resembles the reflexed petals of Cyclamen. There was one super-large mutant in this clump, and though I am sure it would sell well if brought into cultivation (if it hasn't been already), I found that at such a size the flower lacked the charm of the smaller version. 

Narcissus cyclamienus will spread by self seeding, as it has done at the Botanics. What I love most about it is the graphic effect it gives to the landscape with its bright hatchmarks of gold looking as though they've been stroked onto the landscape with a fine brush. 

This little Erythronium dens-canis is complex and best observed up close. Plant it in a trough or somewhere closer to eye level to best appreciate its details. 

This strangely lurid purple plant is the romantically named Lathraea clandestina. It's actually a parasitic plant, living off the roots of mostly poplar and willow but sometimes other species. It has no chlophyll and instead survives by attaching haustoria (suckers) on its roots to the roots of its host tree, gaining its nutrition through the host plant. 

Finally I found what I was looking for, my friend the stunning Pulsatilla vulgaris. Its common name, the Pasque flower, refers to is tendency to bloom at Easter. This British native, which grows on calcareous (chalky lime) soil, is now endangered in the wild. Just last night in the bath I was reading Vita Sackville-West's Let Us Now Praise Famous Gardens, a selection of weekly columns she wrote for the Observer newspaper. Of Pulsatilla vulgaris she wrote, "This is a native of our Downs, getting rare in its wild state but still cultivated in gardens. It is a soft and lovely thing, pale lilac in colour with a silvery floss-silk surround." It is interesting to me that even in 1950 the plant was recognized as rare. I have been lucky enough to see it in its native habitat, which I will no doubt write about someday. 

Some of the plants were not yet blooming in the rock garden, but I found this little unlabeled clump on the south side of a large rock, where it was most likely a bit ahead of its relatives by virtue of a slightly warmer microclimate.

I was hoping for some sun, as the fine hairs on the plant make for some stunning photos. But it was just about to bucket down rain, despite starting my short walk under sunny skies.

Regardless, I was pleased that the lit-from-within effect was still present without sun, as seen on this clump of Pulsatilla halleri subsp. rhodopaea (though it's labeled with its synonym, Anemone rhodopaea). I find Pulsatilla absolutely magical, and will return in a few days--hopefully when the sun is out--to photograph them as their blooms continue to open and the spring garden returns to life.