Scottish Plant Hunters Garden Part 1

 

Have you ever walked round your garden and admired the  primulas , the Meconopsis or the Lupins? Have you wondered how they arrived in this country? Many of them were brought over in the past 250 years at the time of the British Empire by Botanists and plant hunters. They were able to do this through sponsorship by wealthy employers, keen for new additions to their gardens or by Botanic Gardens interested in expanding their knowledge as well as their collections. The Government of the day also financed some of the trips to improve trade links.

The tradition is continued today by plant hunters such as Peter Cox (an expert on rhododendrons from Glendoick in Perthshire) and Jim Sutherland  (Ardfearn Nursery in Inverness shire). Further afield Crug plants in Wales are well known for their plant hunting expeditions.

The Scottish Plant hunting tradition is celebrated in a garden in Pitlochry in Perthshire. Already a place popular with tourists and locals, the picturesque town is famous for it’s theatre (no10 on the map) and it’s fish ladder on the River Tummel. 

The garden is divided into areas. Each one is dedicated to a collector and the part of the world he collected from. The borders are planted up with the plants that he (it was always a “he” in those days) brought back for cultivation in Britain.

We made two visits to the Garden. The first was in April and the second in August. The photographs reflect this.

*Map courtesy of the Scottish Plant Hunters Garden

The entrance kiosk (1) resembles a compass symbolising the plants hunters great journeys round the globe. And joy, there are plants for sale.

 

The east point of the compass with views across to the surrounding hills. After paying your entrance fees to one of the willing volunteers (there is one gardener and 50 volunteers, I asked) it's off to begin the tour.

This first area (2) has a large piece of sculpture which I really dislike. It's a piece that was designed to take inspiration from various elements in the garden and  represents a cross section of a Forsythia ovary. There is no photo of this piece of sculpture as I was so unimpressed.... But don't let that put you off.

Lets move on through to the southern hemisphere (3) which included plants from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and South America. The planting is a bit sparse here.  There are however information boards about each plant hunter dotted along the paths. The plants hunters celebrated here are:

Francis Masson (1741-1805)  Some of the best known plants he collected were Kniphofia caulescens (Red Hot Pokers) and Agapanthus campanulatus(African Lilies)

James Drummond (1786-1863) Among his collections are different types of Eucalyptus including E. gunni.

David Lyall (1817-1895) Famous for collecting many New Zealand Plants including Phormium Tenax (New Zealand Flax) (it looks very at home in Orkney nowadays) and Astelia

nervosa.

The path divides here and you can go up the hill or down the steps. We usually go down to look at the amphitheatre (5). Plays are performed here in conjunction with the Pitlochry Theatre at the bottom of the hill.

Moving upwards again we reach a pavilion (6) named after one of the best known Scottish Plant Hunters, David Douglas. Most people will have heard of the Douglas Fir. This building is made of Larch, Oak and Douglas Fir.

David Douglas (1798-1834) How many of these plants are in your garden? Garrya eliptica ,

Ribes sanguineam, Cornus Alba and Trillium Grandiflorum are some of his best known.

The Pavilion is perched on the hill at the top of the garden with views across to the Tummel Valley. 

Drifts of  Primula Florindae are planted on the hill depicting the North American Glade.

Inside the Davis Douglas pavilion is an exhibition space. On our last visit there were photos from a Plant Hunting exhibition "In Search of the Blue Poppy" with the Head Gardener Julia Corden  (at last a woman plant hunter!) in Bhutan. She went specifically to gather specimans of new plants. The photos of Bhutan were breathtaking as were the photos of the mecanopsis, including the rare pink poppy Mecanopsis sherriffii. This was named after the plant hunter George Sherriff.

George Sherriff (1898-1967) Among his finds were Primula cockburnia and Mecanopsis grandis.

One of the strengths of this garden is the hard landscaping and the architecture. A good example of dry stane dyking can be seen in these seats, wall and moon gate.

To be continued in Part 2....

PS Friends have alerted me to the fact that if you use the browser "Explorer" you won't be able to see the drop down menus on the blog. In fact they will interfere with you seeing the first part of the post. I haven't been able to sort this so far.

Can I suggest if you are missing part of the Planticru Notes experience that you could download "Firefox"  "Safari" or "Chrome". They all seem to work.