2024 – CHW
Grass cutting has started today in the Kitchen Garden where the growth is already considerable. It was only cut once last year and that was probably a mistake.
Daphne Scott-Harden sends a range of pictures of her wonderful garden in Northumberland. We supplied many of the plants decades ago and the end result remains as good as ever because it is properly maintained. I have never seen the Iris and Azaleas at their best as we only see the garden in August and September.
Deutzia ningpoensis looking very fine in Tin Garden. I am on a tour with c.20 Americans.
The Rare Plant Fair at Tregrehan was a complete sell out with over 1000 people attending in the sunshine and 23°c. Rare plants sold without a word from the customers to people who knew exactly what they were.Couldn’t help stopping on the way out of the show to photograph Cornus kousa ‘Doubloon’.
2022 – CHW
Nursery day today – warm but welcome rain overnight.
A huge clump of Lupinus ‘Manhattan Lights’.
The rare plant fair at Tregrehan with a normal level of attendance by nurseries and the public. Good to meet up with the serious gardening fraternity after so long.The Deutzia purpurascens in the trade stand area.
The dog pen is now complete as are the repair works to the lead gutters above the Georgian Hall.It seems we may have four electronic and automated parking machines for Porthluney Beach car park in three to four weeks. Pay when you arrive, leave or during/beforehand on an app. The kit is supplied to the owner and the installer collects the fines from those who do not pay as his return on the investment. This is how car parks operate today.COVID 19 has made us go ‘contactless’ as we rethink and improve. We hope we have selected the best and most reputable local installer of such equipment having canvassed the market. Their equipment is at Fistral Beach and several other south coast beaches in Cornwall. The operator has had meetings with our local MPs and has a good track record of not cheating or being stupid over the fines. Providing you input two digits of your car registration number correctly into the machine you will not get fined (providing you have paid!). In winter we will not charge for the first hour but then perhaps £1.00 per day.There will probably be an uproar from the locals so batten down the hatches on social media. No overnight parking will now mean you get fined rather than a bollocking or being moved on.No need to lock the gates each night. Less labour taking the money (all cash) by hand as in the past. However the loos will still need cleaning and the rubbish sorting out all over the beach and in the car park.Those who will oppose all this and be disgusted need to understand a few things:1. Season ticket holders will be free (in their own car) once they have paid the (unchanged) fee2. The system can be turned off for weddings, evening events, fetes etc.3. Garden visitors will have a way to cancel the parking charge
4. Locals, staff, holiday let guests, Vean guests or anyone else who qualifies and gives us their car number plate to enter into the system will not need to pay (as now).
5. Business rates on car parks are considerable as is the cost of scarifying, levelling and importing hard core to the car park every year after winter storms.
6. The estate has spent over £30k on beach defence repair/strengthening works over the last five to seven years. Without this work a good part of the car park would have disappeared into the sea. The actual repair cost was more than double this but insurance covered the rest on the basis that insurers will never cover the beach defences again.
The installer of the equipment told us that COVID 19 has brought forward the ‘cashless’ society by eight to ten years. This is the reality in which we all now live even in the beautiful, inaccessible, not overlooked, and unspoilt backwater of Porthluney Beach. There are very few places left like it in Cornwall and a new parking payment system is not going to change that.
An unnamed and very late flowering evergreen azalea by Georges Hut. It had a flower or two out at Christmas. A green hue in the base of the trumpets. These dwarfish plants may have once been indoor Christmas azaleas which surprisingly survived.
Stewartia rostrata with pink buds just opening.
2019 – CHW
Styrax japonicus ‘Emerald Pagoda’ absolutely plastered in flower as never before. Easily the best named clone of japonicus.
A very late season flowering of a red form of Rhododendron cumberlandense (or so it says on the plans).
Starting to photograph new plants for inclusion in the 2018 Burncoose catalogue:Lonicera tragophylla ‘Maurice Foster’ is out for the first time ever with us. A gentle light yellow flower with a large flower cluster.
Clematis florida ‘Taiga’ got into the shortlist of 10 for Plant of the Year at Chelsea 2017. Its first flowers in the nursery.
The medlar tree is in place on the bank outside the front door for the official ‘planting’ ceremony by the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers later in the month. It sits beside a mulberry which is about as close to a genuinely fruiting tree as Caerhays gardens get. It may well need watering as we are now a fortnight post Chelsea without rain.
More quests for magnolias in flower today but nothing much new with two exceptions.
Growing well, but incorrectly in full shade, I find Umbellularia californica. You get more than a headache if you crush and inhale the leaves. A tender plant and quite rare outside.
Hidden away beside it is a present from Tom Hudson, Rhoiptelea chiliantha, which he collected in Vietnam. A forerunner in the juglandaceae/rhoipteleaceae and back into the tertiary and cretaceous periods of fossil history. A millions of years old plant survivor from the origins of evolution from mosses and algae. Looks tender (also dull)!
Above the big tree fern on the Main Path is a smallish plant of Magnolia wilsonii. Same coloured stamens but quite different in shape from Magnolia sieboldii sinensis. Not a very healthy plant.
Just above it are two Magnolia ‘Pride of Norway’ which look like an improved or selected form of Magnolia wilsonii with a good shape. These came from Magnoliastore and I need to investigate further. Presumably the magnolia breeder from Gothenberg?
Aesculus bushii is a quick grower with a beautiful flower just going over today.
The original Rhododendron staminium in the Main Quarry is nearly over. A week ago I did not photograph it as it was hardly out. One year we had this at Chelsea on our stand.
On the way back down to the Playhouse I cannot resist the oldish Azalea ‘Rosebud’ in full flower.
Clearance work now complete behind the Symplocos paniculata. Laurel all cut back and azaleas cut down ready for the mini digger. Our new recruit from Pengreep has done a good job. Nice place for some large growing rhodos and two more old enkianthus uncovered here too. Sadly over but look like Enkianthus campanulatus.
1990 – FJW
First 12 hour soak for some time. Wet Royal Cornwall. Rho’s out – micranthum, stamineum, decorum, Tally Ho x’s. Most azaleas over.
1959 – FJW
Sent the following for Royal Box at R.C. Show – Tally Ho, Griersonianum, Mich. Doltsopa, Stewartia, pink Escallonia, pink Decorum, Souliei hybrids, macrostemum and many azaleas. Werrington had very little.
Much on the previous page for 1916 and 1917 is over and the air is too dry for Rhodo’s to open well, a good Harrow hybrid with a dark leaf has turned up, no blotch, scented and a nice rose pink. One Wilson late Fortunei is open.