THE FRIENDS OF THE CRUICKSHANK BOTANIC GARDEN Newsletter September 2011 In this issue :- • Programme of events for the year • What’s going on in the Garden • Volunteers in Gardens and Arboreta - report of a recent PlantNetwork Conference • Synopsis of two recent talks: Geraniums, restraint and discrimination Fungi in the Garden • Origanum, a mountain of joy • Our Autumn Plant Sale on October 29 1 Autumn Plant Sale Saturday October 29, 10.30 until noon by the potting sheds Can we raise over eight hundred pounds again this November? Please deliver your clearly labelled plants the day before, or well before 10am on the morning of the sale. House plants can be left in the glass corridor by the potting sheds. There is no need to pot up large herbaceous divisions, as long as you dig them just a day ahead, wrap in damp newspapers, pop in a carrier bag and tie on a label securely. (see below) Do tell your friends and neighbours about the sale and bring them along, armed with baskets, boxes and bags to carry home the many desirable plants on offer. Let a committee member know if you can advertise the sale, perhaps in a community newsletter or put up some posters supplied by the committee in local halls or community centres. Hot drinks and food can be bought at the nearby Hub (formerly the University Refectory) on St Machar Drive. Plant labelling Committee members and volunteers who staff the stalls at our Plant Sale can be hampered when plants are not well labelled. With blooms long gone and most foliage died back, identification can only be guesswork. We offer these suggestions: • Prepare plastic (not paper) labels in advance. Most 500g yoghurt pots and litre ice cream containers can be cut up into labels. Use a paper perforator on the former if you want to add ties. • Use a waterproof marker pen in case there is rain. • Masking tape is strong enough to secure unwieldy herbaceous plants in carrier bags. If short of labels you can write on it as well. • If you do not know the full name of the plant, please add a description including colour and height. 2 Friends of the Cruickshank Botanic Garden Programme 2011-2012 October 13 Ken Thompson Don’t judge a plant by appearances October 29 (Saturday) Plant sale in the Garden – 10.30am to noon November 10 Dick Birnie Replacing Food with Fun: Understanding changes in the Scottish countryside since 1945 December 8 Ian Young Woodland Bulbs More dates for the diary The Scottish Rock Garden Club, North East Branch Meetings are on Tuesdays at 7.30pm in Rubislaw Church Centre, Fountainhall Road. Guests and visitors will be warmly welcomed and a £3 donation requested. September 27 Stan di Prato Greenland and Svalbard: the Scottish connection October 25 Jim Jermyn New ways of growing Himalayan plants November 29 Rod Begbie Galanthus January 31 Mike Hopkins Mike’s tulips Website: www.scrg.org.uk Royal Horticultural Society, Aberdeen Meetings are on Tuesdays at 7.30pm in the Girls Brigade Hall, 19a Victoria Street. October 4 Alison Goldie and Mark Hutson: The Auricula October 28 Race night at the Cloverleaf, Bucksburn November 1 Seed swap and hints and tips for seed germination December 6 Judith Lorimer: Floral art demonstration January 10 AGM and Gardeners’ Question Time February 7 Ian Young: Inspired to rock Website: www.rhsofaberdeen.co.uk National Trust for Scotland September 10-25 Castle Fraser Annual sale of spring bulbs and garden produce at weekends September10,11,17,18, 24 and 25 from noon until 4.30pm. September 25 Pitmedden Apples and Cornkisters event from 11 until 5pm, with home-grown apples and pears for sale and musical entertainment. 3 Cruickshank Garden Notes - Autumn 2011 So that was summer? Summer’s lease has had a rather short day this year. The horse chestnut trees alongside the Alford road by Dunecht are displaying the yellows of autumn, colchicum, cyclamen and autumn crocus are starting to bloom, flowers are already appearing on Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ and I’m looking for recipes for green tomatoes. On the upside, the sweet corn from our tunnel is ripe and deliciously sweet, and there are 15 large ripening fruit on the true quince tree, Cydonia oblonga, also grown with benefit of polythene! The ample rainfall has brought considerable growth to many trees and shrubs though the lingering effects of the cold winter, as well as completely killing some conifer hedges, has meant that many remaining ones have only made half their usual extension growth. There were no mists, but some mellow fruitfulness on the day I visited the Cruickshank Garden; there are many different sorbus - rowans, whitebeams etc. in the garden with a splendid variety of coloured berries. On the left as you come through the Chanonry gate, is a blush pink-berried Sorbus cashmeriana next to a white berried Sorbus forestii while at the far side of the courtyard is a more usual white-berried Sorbus cashmeriana, excellent as a multi-stemmed small tree. A number of plants in the ‘noticeboard bed’ are still showing the effects of the winter. There is a moribund Phormium tena x- New Zealand flax, with a few straggly leaves - one of many to have suffered mightily in and around Aberdeen, and an Olearia ilicifolia which is a shadow of its former self though agapanthus in both white and blue is flourishing. The self-seeding biennial / short-lived sea holly, Eryngium giganteum, Miss Wilmot’s ghost, enlivens the beds around here while a small-leaved rhododendron in one of the peat beds, is unseasonally covered in blue flowers. Round the corner, the west wall of the Cruickshank building is resplendent to the top in the deep reds of the magnificently vigorous self-clinging Virginia creeper, Parthenocissus quinquefolia. The bed on the eastern lip of the sunken garden is full at the moment of dinner plate sized light brown fungi ( species?), whilst the nearby red berries of the red baneberry, Actaea rubra and the pale yellow ones of Daphne mezereum f. alba provide alternate sources of poison! While further on from here, in the shrub border leading to St. Machar’s Drive, the very shade tolerant Skimmia japonica has this years red berries (not edible but less poisonous than the above) and next year’s buds simultaneously. Nearby the excellent evergreen Eucryphia x nymansensis ‘Nymansay’, a hybrid between two South American species, is wreathed in large multi-stamened white flowers. This, though hardy in Aberdeen where it flowers best with some sun, is not a good long term prospect for higher, more inland gardens where severe winters will finish it off. I grew its much smaller Tasmanian relative E. milliganii successfully at Craigievar till the winter of 1999 took it out, since when despite several attempts I have failed to re- establish it. Though the well cut hedges and hips on the species roses please, there is not much flower power in the rose garden at the moment. The floribundas in the sunken section which might be expected to keep the rose flag flying through late summer, are at the end 4 of their useful life and their flowering is desultory at best. In the sunken garden, the bulb lawn is shorn waiting for the autumn bulb display of colchicum and crocuses, whilst in the bed nearby the impressive bright red dangling fruits of the Himalayan damp-lover, Podophyllum emodi, stand out. A large patch of the North American woodlander, Disporum smithii can be seen under a nearby rhododendron, a member of the lily family, with white Solomon’s seal flowers in spring, now showing off a fine crop of orange berries. The late flowering willow gentian, Gentiana asclepiadia is also here with true blue flowers along the length of its arching stems. Though mainly a plant of woodlands in the wild, it is thriving with me in an open meadow holding its own among the surrounding grasses. The South African bed on the north side of the sunken garden is pleasantly multi-coloured with blue agapanthus, pink Tritonia rosea, green Eucomis comosa and Cape figwort, Phygelius capensis in a variety of colours. The herbaceous border is still a mass of colour, showing or rather not showing the benefits of early and comprehensive staking. Border phlox in shades of pink, white, lilac and a splendid deep purple, eupatorium two metres and more tall with heads of flowers in white and shades of pink, and much else besides. The rock garden, always pleasing for its arrangement of beds, trees and rocks - a strong structure enhanced by the many evergreens, has few but charming flowers at this time of year. Enjoy the cyclamen in the dawn redwood bed, the ‘Angels’s fishing rods’, Dierama pulcherrimum waving in the breeze and the delicate flowers of the Autumn snow flake, while in the shady bed at the bottom of the slope, various forms of Hydrangea aspera, with lace-cap heads of subtle deep lilac are thriving in the moist, cool conditions. So with only the chance of an Indian summer to look forward to, it is time to put some more logs on the fire and hope for a dry day tomorrow! David Atkinson Can you help? The Woodland Trust is looking for people to take part in their ‘Nature’s Calendar’ surveys which seek to monitor climate change. This involves observing the timing of events that denote the onset of Spring and Autumn over the whole of UK. All one has to do is to note the dates certain events occur in your area e.g.