Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Specific Families and Genera => Rhododendron and other Ericaceae => Topic started by: TC on February 20, 2009, 01:32:26 PM
-
Yesterday we visited Benmore to attend a garden walk for members of the RBGE hosted by Peter Baxter, Curator. It was like the first day of Spring, with temperatures above 10c, sunny and no wind. We were updated on plantings and work carried out during the winter, including a look at the new fernery nearing completion. This will be of international significance and promises to be a showpiece of its kind. After a powerpoint display in the gallery and a substantial "rake" - ( Scottish term for a considerable amount)- of sandwiches and soup, Cindy and I set of again to find Rhododendrons in bloom. Even after a long cold spell, the first blooms were coming out. What was more impressive was the huge number of buds on all the plants after a poor 2008 season. Provided we do not get any late frosts, things are looking good. After 4 hours of walking up and down hills, I realised that my legs had aged at a greater rate than the calendar had indicated. They have an electric bus to take the aged and infirm up the 500 foot climb. I used to scorn these softies using this but now I look at it wistfully!
A Benmore house and Rh. strigilosum
B1 Rh. Hookerii specimen
B1A Hookerii in bud.
B2 Large leaf Rhododendron.
B3 New fernery
B4 Rh.anthosphaerum
B8 Rh. cyanocarpum flowers
B6 Rh.oreodoxa flower.
B7 Rh.cyanocarpum bush.
-
A few more
B9 Rh. subansiriense
B10 Rh. Rh.subansiriense flowers.
-
Thanks for this look Tom. I've never been to Benmore and it's obviously worth a visit...
-
Thanks for the early season fix Tom
-
What a beautiful house, it looks like a fairytale castle.
Thank you for showing it.
Ulla
-
Thanks to Maggi for indexing the pictures - I forgot.
Carlo
Google "Washington Post+Benmore gardens" and you will see an article about the garden written in Feb. 2007 by Adrian Higgins, their staff writer. It is interesting to read the impressions of a visitor from overseas. I have known the gardens for so long I probably take it for granted.
Ulla
The house was built in what they call Scottish Baronial style. As a youngster I always imagined that Rapunzel lived in one of the turrets. The house is now used as an outdoor adventure centre for canoeing, climbing and orienteering for schoolchildren aged from 10 to 12.
I apologise for the reproduction of some of the pictures. On my computer they look OK but seem to be rendered overexposed when they appear on the forum.
-
Thanks Ulla, I'll try to look it up...
-
I suddenly realize that you live in the tropics. ;D ;D
Göte
-
Göte
So true !! In Summer we even get temperatures as high as 22ºc and humidity of 90%.
The rainfall in this area was 90 inches in the 1960's. It is now 110 inches.
-
I am just back after having tried to get the snow off my own Rhododendrons some of wich are now nearly flat to the ground. At least one big branch was broken. Also on a Tsuga and a Pseudotsuga.
Göte
-
I came across this to-day taking me completely by surprise as I had not even noticed it opening.R.moupinense
-
The very pretty ciliatum x moupinense hybrid : R. Cilpinense is trying very hard to open here in Aberdeen. We just need a little more sun ::)
-
A beautiful place to visit it seems. I love the house and the FERNERY! Wow. Looks as if it's built in an old style for such things, appropriate to the garden but I bet it cost a bomb!
-
No plans existed for the original fernery which was built about 1880. Because of this, Historic Scotland allowed the actual greenhouse to be rebuilt in "a sympathetic manner" to the period and remaining stonework, which consisted of the gable walls. The structure consists of epoxy coated galvanised steel and coated aluminium which should be strong and maintenance free. There is no heating except for hot air portable blowers which will be used in extreme cold - if they get any. The water will be supplied from a storage tank on the hillside above the building. I believe the building is 50 feet, (15 metres), high and will be built in three levels, all planted in situ . Despite my sensible suggestion, they have refused to incorporate a tea room in the design !!
The cost at present is about £500,000 but fluctuating exchange rates could increase this.
The picture shows it at a different angle and gives an idea of the height when you see the vehicles below.
I will post some pictures when the fernery is finally opened later this year.
-
I did not appreciate the actual scale of the new fernery.... it is much bigger than I imagined. Very smart!
-
Well yes, very big. Look at all those cranes and scaffolding.
Pity about the tearoom Tom. One will need to take one's own cake. ;)
-
Visited the gardens on Thursday 19th. The following pictures were taken by Cindy on her coolpix camera and I think they are better than mine. I had been looking on the grand scale whereas she had been taking close-ups. They look better on the monitor. The detail in my pictures is lost because they need to be shown on a large scale. I posted these already but I got an error message because one was in gif. format - unnacceptable for the forum.
The second flower is floccigerum
-
Cracking pictures from Cindy! Thank you, Cindy for this treat..... hard to believe all these plants are flowering down there right now. :o 8)
-
No frosts then on the weest coast at present. :)
-
The frosts and snow came about two weeks ago and cut the flowers from a Rh. hookeri which was covered in bloom after non -flowering last year.
Sudden oak death has now got into the garden and a large area of rhododendrons has been cleared and burned. This can be seen in the picture of the hillside. When we were there, it was more like Autumn with smoke from burning plants everywhere. Some of the pictures look a bit "dotty" in size and do not give a proper idea of the size of some of these specimens. I had to use a wide angle lens to get the plants in as I could not walk back far enough without falling down the hillside.
Rh. praestans
Garden entrance
Hills from the high road --these are 450 metres or nearly 1500 feet. We are about 450 feet up at this point
Benmore hillside
Benmore low road
Coordinated colours
Rh. barbatum
Rh.faucium
Rh oreodoxa
Rh. arboreum
-
Next batch
Rh. eclecteum
Rh. luteiflorum
Rh. meddianum atrokermesinum
Rh. montroseanum truss
Rh. nobleanum grex "Album"
Rh. planetum
Rh. batemanii
Rh. dauricum
Rh. griffithianum x praevernum
Rh. meddianum var.
-
Last batch
Rh Sino grande
Rh. monstroseanum
Rh. praestans
Rh. racemosum
Rh. thomsonii var thomsonii
-
Super series of Benmore again Tom!
Almost no Rhodo's in the area where I live and if, probably R. dauricum the only
which might show some color this early.
Thanks for showing something totally different of what we see in our area.
-
Tom, Great garden, great rhododendrons, well photographed for our entertainment.
Many thanks, Paddy
-
Lovely pictures Tom (and Cindy) thanks for posting them.
-
Thanks for your comments,however, when I checked out the postings of the pictures, most of them seemed bleached out. I went back to the original files and they looked OK. The pictures were posted using Firefox and Windows XP after processing in Adobe CS2. It then dawned on me that I was now looking at the website on Vista. For some reason when using Vista the colour and brightness are not the same as when using XP. Another little computer glitch to work on ! As an experiment I am going to post some pictures I took at Culzean Castle gardens on the 10 March to see if they come out better. I know that the exposure on these is spot-on
-
Brilliant pictures of a stunning garden Tom and Cindy.
Thanks very much for taking us along on your walk !
(and plse do so again... ;D)
-
We paid another visit on the 20th and were fortunate with what was the warmest day of the year so far - 19c. First a visit to the restaurant and then up to the gallery to see a photographic exhibition. Wine and nibbles were being served. I was asked if I would like a small libation of red wine, to which I declined politely and said that I wanted a large one, which was duly forthcoming. If my English seems strange it is because Cindy is watching Pride and Prejudice next door on the TV and the sound is carrying through to me ! We had an update of the garden from Peter Baxter and set off up the hill. About 3½ hours later we came back down the main path with my left knee in terminal decline. The garden certainly is having a good flowering year with a lot of azaleas and rhododendrons still to bloom. A few pictures at random. I have had enough of photoshop and computers for the night.
Fallen blooms
Rh and maple
Rh. truss
Macabeanum x sino grande truss
Rh. morii
morii flowers
"barbatum species"
Rh.rubiginosum
Rh.xanthocodum
Rh.cinnabarinum
-
Two more
Possibly roylei but I have forgotten
Veysii
-
Some more with and without names !
-
The last batch. These are really for Christina who is taking a Swedish group to the gardens on Monday 4 May. It will give her an idea of what will be in flower and a general view of the terrain
-
Thanks a lot, Tom! Now I look forward to our Scotland tour even more!! I really appreciate the views - and I know how hard it is to zoom out and take in the surroundings whe one is set loose with a camera among such a variety of plants. Thank heaven for the digital era with the easy sharing of photos!
-
Many thanks for another superb show Tom !
The combination of the Maple and the Rhodo is delightfull ... as are so many other pix.
You will have to go back though... I can see a lot more plants still in bud... ;D
-
Wow Tom. Such a show. So many nice ones in there to comment on, but I'll just limit myself to the cinnabarinum which is striking by the look of it. What a great colour combination?
-
We paid a visit to the gardens mainly to see the new fernery which had been opened on 9 September. I cannot say that I am a fan of ferns as they just look like green leaves to me, but they do have their own charm. The climb up to the building is rather steep, with some sets of steps about 18" high and no hand rail. Since an operation on my knee about three months ago, I am not so spry, so it was a bit of a struggle. However, we made it and had a look round. When the plants are more established and larger, it should be quite impressive. We went out of the building to continue the climb up the hill and found that the path was closed for repair. At this point, I remembered the adage from my mountaineering days " Do not climb up anything that you cannot get down"
I could not get down the path we had come up as my knee could not negotiate the steep steps so we had to go up the washed-out path. It was quite "hairy" in bits but we made it to the top. I resolved to be more careful in future. Autumn was just creeping in to the gardens but it will be about 14 days or more before the colour will really start to show. I inspected many of the rhododendrons and they seem to be well in bud for next year.
For some reason a few pictures did not take and have been included in the next post
-
some more pictures
-
Thankyou for the photographs, Tom.
I have a bit of a thing about ferneries, and knew that the RBGE was raising money for Benmore.
How about a trip to Bute for some photos of Ascog Fernery for all of us forumists? ( ;D)
-
Nice set of pics Tom, hope the knee continues to improve.
-
Tom,
Excellent pics. I love the fact that the steps and path look like a winding stream down the hillside. Cool design!
Does anyone know what the tree fern is in Fernery 015? I love the trunk of it and am wondering what type it is?
Thanks.
-
Great show, Tom, lovely place, great to be able to see it.
Paddy
-
Every one of the ferns has a name tag with a full botanical description but I did not bother to take any details as I did not think that anyone would have been sufficiently interested in ferns. I just took the pictures because I thought the building was of general interest. Next visit, I will collect the names !!
All I can say is that they are all temperate varieties and will have to survive the Scottish winter with heating only supplied in any prolonged frost
A couple of more pictures. One of a different view of the large tree fern, one of the approach to the path and one of a genuine wild plant of Scottish Heather.
-
Some Autumn colour taken last week
2009 10 17 Benmore Enkianthus copy.jpg
2009 10 17 Benmore and cotoneasters berries.jpg
2009 10 17 Benmore and hostas 025 copy.jpg
2009 10 17 Benmore and Japanese maple 018 copy.jpg
2009 10 17 Benmore and large sorbus.jpg
2009 10 17 Benmore and Rowan.jpg
2009 10 17 Benmore and Sorbus cashmeriana.jpg
2009 10 17 Benmore Maple leaves and pool.jpg
River Eachaig.jpg
The fourth picture should read Japanese maple not mapleship As I had photographed some warships returning to the Clyde after a large naval exercise and named my folder Benmore and ships, the heading was transferred to all the pictures. When I renamed them, I had not noticed the title had not been fully erased.
-
A couple of late/early? flowering rhododendrons
2009 10 17 Benmore Rh neriflorum
2009 10 17 Benmore Rh. Yellowhammer
-
Thanks , Tom, for the autumn "fix"...... how is the knee doing? Not keeping you in, at least!!?! ;)
-
No, it does not keep me in but curtails my movements somewhat. The real nuisance is my left eye. A year ago, I woke up to find I was blind in my right eye. It was diagnosed as a vein occlusion. The timing was handy as I had a proper excuse to give up the treasurer's post at the Ayr branch without feeling guilty !! After several visits to hospital I had an injection in my eyeball ( this usually gives folk the creeps) and it helped to some extent but cannot cure it. Then I had my knee arthroscopy two weeks later, so this year has been a bit of a dead loss. I have had to learn to use my camera with my left eye which takes a bit of doing, and computer work is tiring. However, there are a lot of people in a worse state than me.
A plus side is that I have more time to play the guitar.
-
Crikey, Tom, that's tough, though good that you can find a plus side to the situation 8)
-
Tom, thanks for your superhuman effort in the circumstances to bring such lovely visions from Benmore Gardens to my computer - I confess to love ferns of all types and think they add a great deal of character to plantings or as specimens. What a contrast their green is to the outstanding Autumn colours you captured, in particular the Sorbus 8)
-
Stunning photos Tom, thank you. I hope your health improves. I look forward to your visits to this garden.
Susan
-
Does anyone know what the tree fern is in Fernery 015? I love the trunk of it and am wondering what type it is?
Thanks.
Looks like an incipient tree-fern Paul.
-
Lesley,
Sorry, I've only just seen your response. Are you meaning insipid (i.e etiolated in this case?), or is the insipient a particular name? The frond bases left on the trunk are quite distinctive, so I don't think it is one of our "usual" southern hemisphere tree fern, or at least the ones I am familiar with anyway. It is obviously a tree fern of some description, but I quite like the linear arrangement of the frond bases, which are quite different to ours here as far as I know? Thanks for the response.
-
My mistake Paul for not reading your post properly. I didn't notice that you said a TREE fern, just saw FERN. I called it incipient because it is still immature, with just fronds from the base, no trunk yet.
-
even worse Paul, I was looking at the wrong picture, 2009 19 17 Fern. ??? ??? ???
-
Lesley,
I'm glad you mentioned that... I was going to ask which pic you were looking at, because there is a LOT of trunk on the pic I was referring to. :D A nice fern, whatever it is. 8)