A Week in Inverewe Gardens

One of the exotics growing in Inverewe Gardens

When you think of plant life in Scotland’s Western Highlands, you might visualize thistle blossoms, heather covered hillsides, or Caledonian pine forests. Unless you’ve spent time in that part of the world, you likely won’t expect to see palm trees, but palms do grow there in locales such as Plockton and Ullapool.

You’ll also find palms trees at Inverewe Gardens, near Poolewe, along with a variety of tropical and other exotic plants Osgood Mackenzie imported from locations around the world for inclusion in the garden he created 150 years ago. In spite of Inverewe’s latitude of 57.8 (for reference, Moscow’s is 55.75), the relatively warm air borne by the North Atlantic Drift makes the survival of such plant life possible. And to help shelter his plant specimens from the wind, Mackenzie established a grove of pines and had a wall erected.

After Mackenzie’s death, his daughter Mairi Sawyer continued work on the garden. In 1952 she gifted Inverewe Estate, which includes the gardens, to the National Trust for Scotland (NTS).

Two years ago I had the opportunity to spend a week living in Inverewe House while serving as a NTS Thistle Camp volunteer. I wrote about that experience in a July guest blog for the National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA. (Scroll down for link.)

Inverewe House

Our major task as volunteers was invasive species eradication. More specifically, we did “rhody bashing,” removal of the non-native Rhododendron ponticum that had spread into the wild. We used mattocks and handsaws to remove rhododendrons that had invaded nearby woodlands and then we burned the resulting debris in bonfires.

During my stay at Inverewe House, I came upon two huge volumes of a limited edition book dated, as I recall, 1917. The volumes were filled with art plates illustrating numerous varieties of rhododendron. While turning the pages, I wondered what Osgood Mackenzie would think of the runaway rhododendrons and our efforts to try to control them. Would he approve of our work? Would he regret his decision to include this plant species in his garden?

In my own garden, I am prone to plant non-natives, as well as natives such as beautyberry. Just today I purchased a Persian Shield (Strobilanthes dyerianus), native to Myanmar, from a local garden center, not stopping to think at the time about whether this plant has the potential to become invasive here in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Already my garden includes nandina heavenly bamboo, which I planted more than twenty years ago soon after I bought this house. According to the University of Florida’s website, the State of Florida has placed nandina on their invasive species list. My garden also includes nandina volunteers, but only three or four. Although I don’t find nandina on my own state’s list, I am reminded that we gardeners need to balance our love for plants with foreign origins with the well-being of our native species.

Not all our time at Inverewe Gardens was spent battling invasive species. In the middle of the week we had a day off from volunteer activities and I spent the morning of that day wandering around the property, photographing flowers and other plants. Eventually the last of my camera batteries fizzled out. Not to be deterred, I switched to my iPhone and continued to take pictures. I’m sorry to report that I did not note the names of the various plants I observed, but I can tell you that among my favorites were the tall spiky red cannas and a gorgeous lace-cap hydrangea.

One can’t help but envy the residents of Poolewe. How fortunate they are to live near Inverewe Gardens. With its more than fifty acres and its numerous plant species, both the familiar and the exotic, this is a place a gardening enthusiast could stroll through every day of the year and never be bored. 

Loch view from the dining room

For more information about Inverewe Gardens visit the National Trust for Scotland website:

http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/Inverewe-Garden-Estate/About/

To learn more about Thistle Camp at Inverewe Gardens read my blog post on the National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA website:
http://www.ntsusa.org/blog/guest-post-inverewe-thistle-camp/

Loch Ewe, a natural beauty

My Grandmother's Canna Lilies

“Weeds are simply not allowed to grow [in her garden],” a newspaper article, circa 1950, said of my grandmother, Chessie Pearce. The article went on to report that she “has been most generous in giving cuttings and plants to her neighbors.”    

My grandmother loved to garden. In spite of living on a small family farm on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, she managed to amass an interesting collection of flowering plants. Her cannas were among my favorites. She grew two varieties: one bearing spiky red blossoms above chocolate-tinged foliage, and the other, green-leaved, boasting bright yellow petals with orange speckles.

My red canna: a hummingbird favorite

When I was a child my grandmother’s canna lilies grew so prolifically that even extras she disposed of in a swampy area beside a wide ditch grew tall and produced flowers. Cannas hanker for rich, moist soil and she provided it.

My yellow canna

After my grandmother died, her cannas lived on.  My mother planted some beneath our living room windows. While waiting for the school bus during the autumn mornings of my teen years, I watched hummingbirds drink nectar from the red flowers.

Flash forward many years. After I bought the house where I now live, my mother dug up rhizomes from my grandmother’s cannas and gave them to me to plant. I didn’t have much success at first. The plants survived, but didn’t thrive. Some years no blooms appeared. One year, leaf-curlers attacked the canna lilies. The next year I dug up the rhizomes and moved them from my sunbaked backyard to a circular bed shaded by the live oak out front. In the new location, leaves rose from the ground; while yellow flowers rarely appeared, the red ones never did.

Over the years I gave canna rhizomes to friends. The resulting plants performed well, blooming beautifully. Clearly, my friends have less sandy soil than I do.

Two summers ago I created a new flowerbed in the backyard and transplanted several of the cannas into it. Much to my delight, both the red and the yellow cannas gained height and bloomed. Soon a hummingbird noticed the spiky red flowers.

On Rokko Island, Kobe, Japan 

What I’ve failed to mention, up until this point, is that for years and years I searched for, but did not find, cannas that looked like the ones my grandmother grew. I’m not sure why I felt the need to find their counterparts, but I did. My quest to find the red and the yellow cannas continued as I scoured plant nurseries and public or private gardens. Every summer I scrutinized cannas growing in the town where I live, and in places where I traveled, but any red cannas I saw had solid green leaves or the flowers weren’t spiky. Many of the cannas growing in public places had orange or salmon colored blossoms.

Inverewe Gardens: Tropical foliage in the Scottish Highlands

Then, in July of 2010 while visiting family on Japan’s Rokko Island, I discovered the familiar yellow canna in front of a multi-family residence. Two months later I came across the spiky red canna with the chocolate tinged leaves at Inverewe Gardens in the Scottish Highlands.

The yellow canna cultivated by a gardener
on Japan's Rokko Island

The red cannas at Inverewe Gardens, 
a National Trust for Scotland property 

Now I have in my garden a third variety of canna lily. Last year during the Charleston Horticultural Society's annual plant sale, known as Plantasia, I bought an orange flowered canna with variegated, striped leaves. My Internet research indicates this variety is called Bengal Tiger.

How I wish I could have shared the Bengal Tiger with my grandmother. She would have adored its gorgeous tropical foliage.

The foliage behind this orange canna flower belongs to the variety with the spiky red flowers.

And this gorgeous leaf belongs to the orange flowered canna shown in the above photograph.