Skip to main content

Posts

Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh pt. 1

Staying directly across the street from The Botanics, I arrived Tuesday morning to a familiar sight and a warm welcome from Elspeth MacKintosh and John Mitchell. I was incredibly eager to see the progress of their tufa wall and new alpine house and made a B line to both. The morning commute through the Rhododendron gates For those who do not know, I was here two years ago on the same Diana Aitchison Fund to study how alpine houses are built. On my last part of that trip, I spent a day talking with John and Elspeth on their alpine houses to better understand how they are built and to get ideas on how to build one for Betty Ford. The alpine display house had signs of age and was undergoing plans to be rebuilt. At first I almost mistaked the new one for the old one but quickly noticed the new cedar and paving surrounding it. In keeping with the same look as the older one, the new alpine house is absolutely beautiful and quite "smart" as Elspeth would say. Th
Recent posts

Perth, Cluney Gardens, and The Highlands

After a fantastic week in Sweden, I flew over to Scotland where I met up with Carly Epping, also a Diana Aitchison fund student, around 2pm on Friday. We traveled by train up to Perth where we met Julia Corden who was busy setting up for Saturday's SRGC alpine show. Julia drove us to her home in idyllic Scottish town called Pitlochry. The double rainbow and snow dusted mountains in the morning looked like a water color painting. We spent all day Saturday in Perth for the SRGC show where I had the privilege of guest judging with Ian Christie and Ron Mcbeth. It was a lot of fun to talk plants and reconnect with many familiar faces from my trip 2 years ago. Plant shows are unfortunately uncommon in the US. I find them very valuable for networking, community, and spreading knowledge and passion for growing new or rare plants. I hope the tradition continues for years to come and maybe makes its way to the states. The judges and Julia Carly stewarding at her first show eve

Henrik and Hepatica hunting

Johan, Jonathan and I arrived to a surreal country side scene about 2 hours north of Gothenburg on a cold and cloudy morning. The vast open landscape was comforting after being in the city for many days. I noticed the soil turn red as the tiles on the houses themselves. We had arrived at Henrik Zutterlund's home in Kinnekulle. Henrik is a key figure in the world of Alpines and bulbs. He has been on many trips around the world collecting rare and unusual plants and has brought many of them back to Goteburg Botaniks where they are a staple of the collections. Henrik admiring his  Corylus fargesii - rare and maybe the only one in Sweden We jumped out of the car eager to stretch our legs and immediately stepped on some flowering bulbs. I quickly realized there were thousands of Muscari, Chionodoxa and Narcissus growing among the lawn and drive way. There was no way to not step on them and later we laughed about it. probably stepped on these at some point Henrik&#