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After our very successful Spring Show at Gargunnock village hall near Stirling, members of the SRS visited 2 gardens in the area:

Ardvorlich

Stephen Fox

Ardvorlich is situated on the south side of Loch Earn and has, for many years been the home of the Stewart family.

We were given a warm welcome, with hot drinks and biscuits, by the present owner Sandy Stewart who then accompanied us on a tour of the garden.

The garden is laid out on a hillside facing the house and is divided into two by a stream.

The west bank was planted by Sandy’s father and the east bank later by Sandy himself. There is a corresponding difference in the maturity if the plants, which are chiefly rhododendrons.

The hillside is steep and the visitor must climb some 200 yards before reaching the lower entrance of the west bank.

Each half has a high road and a road lower into the valley. We traversed all four paths, crossing the stream by bridges.

There was an excellent show of flowers, mainly species but with many high quality hybrids also.

Notable rhododendon species were R. niveum, R. davidsonianum, R. augustinii, R. hyperythrum, R. keysii, R. wardii, a deep red R. ochraceum and the rare R. searsiae. An interesting hybrid was R. viridescens x R. lutescens, covered with yellow flowers and barely distinguishable from R. ambiguum.

Sandy visits his garden most days, which, apart from the obvious delights, keeps him in trim physically.

Touch House

Brian Moss

Following lunch at Dobbie's Garden Centre, we drove to Touch House, Angus Watson’s property, near Stirling.

Touch House is situated alongside the carse or marshland that extends all the way to Gargunnock, although the land has long since been drained to provide grazing pasture.

The rain that had threatened at Ardvorlich during the morning had cleared away, so we set off to see the delights of Touch House reasonably confident of not getting a soaking.

We soon passed some fine English yews, one tree having a large basal cavity cleaned out and filled with concrete, not a recommended practice these days as it is impossible to monitor the progress of further decay.

Attention was then drawn to a nice Rhododendron ‘Loder’s White’. Nearby, were free flowering R. neriiflorum and R. haematodes with particularly good indumentum.

There was very little evidence of native woodland trees in the garden with the tree cover made up of exotic species. The owner had apparently removed some wind shelter from part of the garden with half a dozen Metasequoia badly wind shorn as a result, although beneath the conifers was a fine young Rhododendron thomsonii, with good clean foliage.

This species and most of the R. cinnabarinum hybrids are badly affected by powdery mildew with us in Cornwall. Unlike Ardvorlich, Touch House was generally more formal with areas of neatly clipped lawns. These contained numerous young specimen trees, in particular a great broad mound of Acer palmatum ‘Atropurpureum’ and a dozen Betula utilis strangely planted in two straight rows.

After passing R. augustinii ‘Electra’, we spotted R. wardii. Considerable time was spent mulling over whether it was a hybrid, and was there R. ‘Nancy Evans’ popping up in the background? Part of the walled garden had obviously collapsed and the owner had recently had the whole thing rebuilt. I thought immediately of Willie Campbell who has the same problem at Gargunnock.

Further on we found a nice young plant of Rhododendron ‘Loderi’ but could not make up our minds whether it was ‘Gamechick’ or ‘Venus’ but there was no doubt about the R. pachysanthum that had just finished flowering but had fine orangey indumentum. Kenneth Cox had entered R. sanguineum spp. sanguineum var. haemaleum in the show the day before and this variety was spotted, with its incredibly dark crimson black flowers. Magnolias are, I'm told, not usually a feature of Scottish gardens, although M. stellata and M. x soulangeana were seen, sheltering in a corner of the walled garden. As we left the garden, I noticed a good sized specimen of the dwarf balsam fir (Abies balsamea) which Marlene Storah confirmed, by bruising some foliage. The fir was vying for space with a R. ‘Carmen’ and succeeding.

We all returned to the car park and before departing, John Roy proposed a vote of thanks to Willie Campbell who, we all agreed, had done a splendid job in arranging the visits to Ardvorlich and Touch, making for a most enjoyable day. The car park resounded to well deserved applause from all members present.

All photos on this page by John Roy

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