Janet Baraclough wrote:
contains these words:
Ericacious plants are not salt tolerant at all. Azaleas are in that
group.
Well, that just ain't so. Much of west Scotland is acid peaty soil,
lashed by salty rain and salt-laden wind. Some of the commonest
naturalised plants are ericaceous. Heather and rhododendron ponticum
both thrive right down to the (salt)water edge here. Pieris, and
deciduous and evergreen azaleas do very well, and it's common for very
wind (and salt) swept gardens to have huge old deciduous azaleas as a
windbreak on the sea side. West Scotland's salt-laden coast is famous
for its rhododendron gardens .
I spent most of the month of May visiting Scotland's famous rhododendron
and azalea gardens and none grew rhododendrons nor azaleas near the open
sea or near the beaches. The rhododendron and azalea gardens I visited
we
Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh (not near the sea)
Glendoick Gardens, Perth (not near the sea)
Branklyn Garden (NT), Perth (not near the sea)
Inverewe Gardens (NT) (on Loch Ewe, a sal****er estuary, but the
rhododendrons and azaleas are either grown in walled gardens or on high
ground. In their official brochure they describe the "curse of the salt
spray")
Arduaine Gardens (NT), Inveraray (on a high slope overlooking the Sound
of Jura.)
Benmore Gardens (RBG), Benmore (a woodland setting not near the sea)
Crarae Gardens (NT), Inveraray (on the Crarae Burn (a fresh water creek)
not near the sea)
Brodick Castle & Gardens, Isle of Arran (on an island on the Firth of
Clyde, but it is situated high not near the sea)
Not many Scots consider ponticum a garden plant. The Scots have done
considerable research on the resistance of plants to the salt spray and
to limestone. They have found plants which can tolerate these notorious
enemies of rhododendrons and azaleas. However, there are many plants we
can grow in the USA that they don't grow because of their conditions.
You don't see many of our common plants over there. Surprisingly they
do raise many of our "iron clads" which are fairly tolerant of many
things.
--
Pardon my spam deterrent; send email to
Visit my Rhododendron and Azalea web pages at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rhodyman/rhody.html
Also visit the Rhododendron and Azalea Bookstore at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rhodyman/rhodybooks.html
Cheers, Steve Henning in Reading, PA USA Zone 6