Gardening Scotland Blog

Lots of visitors who come to Gardening Scotland every year are enthusiastic and knowledgeable gardeners but increasingly many visitors are new to gardening and want to find out more.

Fortunately the Show can provide them with an unrivalled line-up of top gardeners and leading experts all ready to impart their advice.

For the first time this year a group of Scottish Garden Designers will be running a stand where visitors to the Show can find out everything they’ve ever wanted to know about working with a garden designer.

The BBC Scotland Beechgrove Theatre will be hosting talks and workshops with Scotland’s top TV gardening team, and radio presenter Mark Stephen will be inviting Gardening Scotland visitors to pose questions to the panel during recordings of Radio Scotland’s Beechgrove Potting Shed.

Meanwhile the Garden Roadshow in association with DiscoverIreland.com will be pitching its caravan in The Dobbies Floral Hall. Here a team of top gardening journalists will be giving lively advice throughout the three days of the Show. The line-up will include Martin Fish from Garden News and Sarah Hopps and Geoff Stebbings from Garden Answers Magazine.

In addition, every single one of the stallholders in The Dobbies Floral Hall is an expert in their particular plants.

Meanwhile in The Earthy Green Garden, STV gardener Pete Jackson will be answering every possible question on grow-your-own and recycling. So if wonder why your lettuces are bolting and your wisteria is wilting or you want to know how to grow potatoes in your patio, Gardening Scotland 2010 is where you’ll find the answer.

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Three of Scotland’s largest local authorities will be creating memorable displays at Gardening Scotland 2010.

Fife Council will be celebrating their parks, Blue Flag beaches and return this year of the Open Golf Tournament at St Andrews by creating a model of that Old Course landmark, the Swilken Bridge, and covering it in 70,000 achillea flower heads.

Glasgow City Council will be using plants from around the world to celebrate the Commonwealth, as a precursor to the arrival in Glasgow in 2014 of The Commonwealth Games, while Edinburgh City Council will be using a scale model of a Spitfire and lots of red, white and blue plants to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

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Last chance to book advance tickets! Book before 5pm on 28th May and receive up to £2 off each ticket.

Tickets are also available on the gate.

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Every year a very long list of top nurseries and growers from across the UK fill The Dobbies Floral Hall with stunning flowers. Well this year that list is set to grow with the news that Gardening Scotland 2010 will feature more floral exhibitors than ever before, including some with international reputations.

If you are looking to indulge a passion for gorgeous plants then you won’t want to miss this year’s Show because amongst the new exhibitors will be renowned plant hunters Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones from Crug Farm Plants.

When they are not working in their nursery in Wales, Sue and Bleddyn are usually to be found in some of the most distant parts of the world, including North Vietnam, Nepal and the Philippines seeking out the next plant sensations.

World of Ferns, also from north Wales, is the UK’s leading specialist fern nursery selling tropical and hardy species from around the world. They’ve won gold medals at almost every other major Show in the UK and this year for the first time they’ll be bringing some of their rare and unusual plants to Gardening Scotland.

Other leading nurseries that will be taking part for the first time include Bell Nursery from Kirriemuir while Rumbling Bridge Nursery will be collaborating with Hawthorn Castings on a major exhibit and Quercus Garden Plants from Fife will also be exhibiting in tandem with Scotland’s Gardens Scheme.

Meanwhile Gardening Scotland will be welcoming back many regular exhibitors including Fir Tree Pelargoniums, Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants, North of England Bonsai, Cairsnsmore Nursery who specialise in Heucheras, Alpines and Primulas and Harts Nursery with their wonderful lilies.

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WHY not combine your visit to Gardening Scotland 2010 with a short break in Scotland’s beautiful capital?

The Caledonian Hilton on Princes Street is offering special all-in deals that include tickets to the Show with dinner and accommodation in one of Edinburgh’s most prestigious hotels.

There’s a one-night package priced at £199 that includes a double room, dinner in the Caledonian Hilton’s Chisholms restaurant, full Scottish breakfast and afternoon tea in the Pompadour Restaurant and two one-day tickets for Gardening Scotland.

Alternatively for £299 you could enjoy all the above and turn your break into a two-night stay.

To book your trip call 0131 222 8888 or visit the Hilton Calendonian website

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Lothian Buses will again operate a shuttle service, number 98, to Gardening Scotland. The buses will leave from St Andrew Square and Haymarket as well as number 31 bus stops on the way to the Showground. This service will be free for those with senior and concession travel cards. For more information and a timetable please visit the bus service page or call 0131 333 0965.

Unfortunately Citylink will not be operating dedicated services to the Show but will still have their regular services available.

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To most gardeners ‘tweets’ are what you hear as you dig the vegetable patch or hoe between plants – they are the sounds made by the bird life that lives in the shrubs and surrounding hedges.

Now though there’s a new ‘tweet’ in the garden but you won’t find it in the trees. This one is coming from Twitter, one of the newest social media websites.

Unlike Facebook or Bebo, posts on Twitter are restried to just 140 characters, but far from being a drawback this pithy style makes Twitter the closest thing to live conversation that you’ll find on the web.

Twitter is a favourite of many celebrities, including Stephen Fry and Eddie Izzard, who both post new ‘tweets’ several times a day, and since last month you have also been able to find Gardening Scotland 2010 on Twitter, under the username GardenScotland.

What we’ve discovered since joining Twitter is that it is full of enthusiastic gardeners all busy talking to one another, and not just amateurs either. Designers Cleve West and James Alexander Sinclair are amongst the famous gardeners to use it regularly.

Many Gardening Scotland exhibitors are now on Twitter too, including Fir Trees Pelargonium, who you can follow by searching for ‘Pelargonium’.

So while there’s snow on the ground and there’s still some life left in the Quality Street tin, why not join Twitter and start receiving all the latest updates on Gardening Scotland 2010 as they happen?

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Over the last week I’ve been compiling the Gardening Scotland Events Calendar.

The idea is that visitors to the Gardening Scotland website will be able to use it to plan their gardening year, choosing from amongst hundreds of gardening and environment-related events.

Many organisations have still to finalise their plans for 2010, so keep checking back as the Calendar will be updated regularly.

What has astonished me in the course of pulling together all the details is just what wealth of knowledge and expertise is available. Whether you want to find out more about growing vegetables or to perfect your pruning techniques, there’s a workshop available. From snowdrop days to close encounters with butterflies, you can also use the Calendar to find out about great days out and amongst the listings are many that are suitable for children.

It is great to see that the Snowdrop Festival is thriving. From 1 February to 15 March there are dozens of special garden openings across the country where you can enjoy the spectacle of woodlands carpeted in these lovely little flowers. Gardening Scotland show manager Jim Jermyn is a great ‘Galanthophile’ as snowdrop lovers are called and he says that there are many rare snowdrops growing wild in Scotland today that were brought back by soldiers returning from the Crimea.

I’ve had mixed results with snowdrops in my own garden. Mostly they sulk, so I’m going to visit Finlaystone Estate near Langbank in March and buy some of their snowdrops ‘in the green’. Planting snowdrops just as the foliage and flowers are going over guarantees much better results that planting bulbs in the autumn so hopefully I should finally manage to get some established underneath my cherry trees.

Over the festive season however the only gardening I’m planning to do is to curl up in an armchair with a glass of wine and next year’s seed catalogues. So often the secret of gardening lies in timing and I reckon that Christmas and New Year are the perfect time for gardeners everywhere to put their feet up.

Agnes

View the calendar now

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Congratulations to the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society which has just marked its bicentenary. ‘The Caley’ as it is affectionately known runs a hugely popular advice stall at Gardening Scotland where members answer visitors queries on everything from planting and pruning to pests and diseases.
Last week however it was the members themselves who were given the chance to put their questions to the experts when the Caley took part in a very special recording of Gardeners’ Question Time.
I was lucky enough to be in the audience to hear Bob Flowerdew, Bunny Guinness and Chris Beardshaw tackle queries with wit and wisdom and I’ll be tuning in to Radio Four at 3pm on Friday, 4 December to hear the broadcast. (The programme will be repeated at 2pm in Sunday, 6 December).
Gardeners’ Question Time has been on the air for more than 60 years and I’ve been listening to it for at least 20 of those, so it was a real treat for me to meet the panellists before they Show.
When I joined them they were in the middle of a discussion about the merits of ‘instant’ hedging, with Bunny Guinness, who had used it on several projects, coming out strongly in favour of it.
Bunny was also very much in favour of the cakes that were piled high on plates along the length of the table.
“We do the Show in village halls, church halls and community centres around the UK and over the years we’ve learnt to judge each venue by the quality of the cakes,” she told me.
Fortunately the standard of the questions posed by Caley members measured by to the home baking and the result was a lively and hugely enjoyable recording that was brilliantly chaired by broadcaster Eric Robson.
Bringing GQT and The Caley together was proof that some of our oldest gardening institutions have as much going for them today as they did when they were formed.
Agnes Stevenson

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