In article , Janet Baraclough
wrote:

The message
from Stephen Henning contains these words:

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.

Garbage. If you were ever here, you never looked at a map.


The rhododendron and azalea gardens I visited
we

Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh (not near the sea)

I suggest you look at the atlas. Edinburgh is a SEAPORT.

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")

Lochewe is a seabay, a fjiord. Open to the Atlantic Ocean. Look at
that atlas again. Few if any of the rhodos there are in the sun-facing
walled garden which was built for herbaceous and vegetable gardening.

Arduaine Gardens (NT), Inveraray (on a high slope overlooking the Sound
of Jura.)

Arduaine is at sea level on the west coast, NOT at Inveraray.

Benmore Gardens (RBG), Benmore (a woodland setting not near the sea)

Where do you GET this garbage?????? Benmore is in a woodland setting
at Dunoon on the Holy Loch; where the US Navy used to keep its
submarines.

Crarae Gardens (NT), Inveraray (on the Crarae Burn (a fresh water creek)
not near the sea)

Crarae (I work there too) is right on Loch Fyne, another sea
inlet/fjiord. The freshwater burn through the garden runs into 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)

This is hilarious. I live on Arran in Brodick, I work in Brodick
Castle Gardens.The castle is 100 ft above SEAlevel, and less than 100
m from the water. The rhododendrons and azaleas are between the castle
and the sea. As I type I am looking across the SEA bay to Brodick
Castle and its gardens which run right down to the SEAwater. Many of the
most important rhodos in the garden grow (and self-seed) in the section
called "Plant hunter's walk", which is right down at sea level maybe 10
m from the water.

Not many Scots consider ponticum a garden plant.

Haven't said they do. Rp is a naturalised and highly invasive weed
throughout west Scotland, right down to the sea edge. (The gardens you
list grow far more than ponticum of course.). Yellow azalea is also a
naturalised weed in many west coastal areas, which is why I mentioned
it.

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.

The rhododendron gardens of the west coast of Scotland are all on
acid soils, not limestone. Rhododendrons, because of their resistance
to salt, are often used as wind-shelter belts in the coastal gardens you
mention.

Janet

Isle of Arran, west coast of Scotland.

It seems a bit tawdry for a decent soul like yourself to be telling
Stephen you doubt he's been to Scotland when he certainly has been or
wouldn't've said he had -- he's well enough known in the rhody community
that if he started telling whoppers like you're presuming, a whole lot of
people would know. He is a good reporter on rhododendrons; I'd turn to him
in an instant for any rhody puzzle or problem I was having; his knowledge
is worthy of respect.

The effect of salt on 95% of rhody & azalea varieties is not rare
information from some loon pretending to have been to Scotland as you seem
to be imagining. Whereas, if what you have posited were true, then all
unlikely things are likewise true & the moon really is made of cheese.
What Stephen asserts is that none of these gardens grow rhodies or azaleas
near the open sea or on beaches. That's not the same as claiming the sea
can't be seen from anywhere from any high hilltop, which seems to be your
gambit for denying the reality that the genus rhododendron is simply &
factually extremely salt sensitive.

I'll assume you're mistaking hilltops in view of the sea for saltmarshes
or beeches, as I refuse to believe you'd lie outright. Stephen's quote
from the Inverewe Garden brochure about their troubles with the "curse of
the salt spray" still stands as Inverewe's own testimony on that topic. In
fact the methods by which Inverewe gardens protect rhodies from salt air
are famous & imitated by large scale landscapers. Stephen never said
Inverewe was not near sal****er; he said correctly that the garden admits
to having problems due to this location, & his statements are not rendered
incorrect by you misrepresenting what he said.

Unless you're speaking of R. pontus exclusively, these shrubs cannot be
used as windbreaks against salt winds as you posit, indeed the opposite of
what you describe was done by Osgood Mackenzie at Inverewe. He built
walled terraces to protect against sea winds, & planted Pinus scandinavius
specifically as windbreaks to protect the Inverewe rhododendron
collection from salt winds.

And you can't possibly believe Benmore Botanical Gardens' woodland rhodies
are growing in a salt environment. Their rhody collection occurs mainly in
two parts of the park by their own descriptions as far from sal****er as
they could be placed -- one is imbedded in the center of the park
maximumly protected from salt breezes. The other is on a hillside
protected from wind by both the hill & a forest. So rather than telling
Stephen to get out his atlas, perhaps you should get out your Benmore
Gardens map & look where the rhody gardens really have been placed.

Likewise the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh doesn't grow rhodies by the
sea, & you noting Edinburg itself is a seaport doesn't mean that from the
highest hill to the most distant corner it is one big saltmarsh beloved by
rhodies, & Stephen's statements still stand while yours seem odd. I could
as easily point out that in my port town -- with naval ships big enough to
not scare Bagdad -- is in the heart of one of the world's great
rhododendron capitals therefore rhodies love salt. But the reality is our
famed rhodies aren't grown on sound-front properties without major
sheltering mechanisms, or they die immediately.

If you study those gardens at Benmore & Inverewe & the RBG more closely
I'm sure you'll make out how the rhodies are protected -- at Benmore in
particuolar the landscaping is designed to protect them from salt winds.
It's not always successful alas. It may be too subtle for you to have
realized at first glance how it's arranged, but once it's pointed out
it'll be obvious.

I'm not quite sure why you're so insistant rhodies will grow in salt. Go
dump a bag of salt around the roots of your rhodies & see how long they
last! About the only rhodies that ever establish in nearly saltmarsh or
beach conditions are R. pontus & R. macrophyllum & even they have their
limitations. Among azaleas the Satsuki, Gumpo, & Indica varieties are
moderately salt tolerant, not strongly so, but if you honest-to-crap see
an azalea thriving in sea wind, assess the variety before deciding all or
most such shrubs would therefore do fine in a radically inappropriate
location.

My county, on a penninsula with scores of sal****er inlets & an enormous
sal****er canal along the full length of one side of the county & the
sound along the entire other side, would probably look like familiar
country to you, very much like around Argyle or similar places you'd know
well. A lighthouse near us is surrounded by an abandoned rugosa
plantation dating to when the hips were still basic grocery store produce
-- impenetrable jungle of rugosas flat at beech level where every year
they are well-salted by autumn & winter storms. Not one rhody survives
there -- not even the famously salt-tolerant wild coast rhody because
there is no high ground for them to get above the salt.

We are surrounded by sal****er, yet the county is famous for its azaleas.
The rich folks who live right on the beaches, howevre, have to grow rugosa
roses & suchlike, forgoing our famous rhodies. Nearby Seabeck Park right
on the salt Canal is famous for its wild rhodies -- it'd probably look
like Scotland to you & you'd probably be thinking all those rhodies are
growing in the salt air. But once you leave the hilltop & get down to sea
level, the rhodies disappear. They vastly prefer woodland edges with a
forest between them & the beaches so they are packed one beside the other
on the roadsides but not at the edges of the beech -- despite that they'd
have a better chance of making it than just about any other species or
cultivar.

-paggers
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