In article , Janet Baraclough
wrote:
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 mainly designed, to protect them from high wind, which would
wreak havoc with the large-leaved kinds. There's no escaping salt
anywhere around the Scottish seabord, it lashes down in the very heavy
winter rainfall blasting in from the Atlantic.
That's not what Mackenzie himself claimed to have done; he landscaped to
protect the rhodies from salt air, the opposite of your claim that the
rhodies themselves were planted as barriers to salt air. Mackenzie was
very clear that his design was to protect salt-sensitive plants like the
rhody collection from the salt winds. Insisting he didn't do what he
explicitly did do suggests a grave disrespect for those who brought
world-famous gardens into existence.
Save your patronage, Jessica. This is a small country, I've visited
all those gardens countless times, I work in two of them for the body
that owns and runs four of them. In leaping to the indefensible you have
only exhibited your own ignorance of Scottish gardens, climate and
topography. Well, that's understandable from someone in America who has
never seen the gardens she speaks of.
I only read about such distant gardens & their designers but I do tend to
believe what the landscapers & growers say about their own work &
intentions, which in this case are in conflict with much of what you've
written in the weirdly extreme claims that rhodies in Scotland thrive in
salty environments. Peter Cox who HAS been to every one of these gardens &
also stood in rhody gardens in my neck of the woods as well as in new
zealand & japan & elsewhere, so if there was a magical difference about
rhodiesin Scotland thriving in conditions that kill them everywhere else,
he'd know about it.
I have only admiration for those who did or are doing the actual work,
whether it is Scottish island specialists in miniature rhodies who stick
to dwarf varieties because they have to protect them inside buildings, or
major public gardens whose designers & caretakers themselves lament the
threat salt air poses any part of their collection insufficiently
protected from ocean or sea.
You'd be surprised how tight the international rhody community is, & just
about every time I am hanging out in some rhody garden with activists in
our internationally famed Rhododendron Species Foundation or the nearby
Poulsbo or Gig Harbor chapters of the Rhododendron Society, someone
mentions some Scot who has provided seeds for something or developed some
new dwarf cultivar. There is no magic difference between the rhodies grown
around Puget Sound & those grown in Scotland. They fail in persistantly
salty winds no matter which side of the world they're grown on. That fact
has to be overcome & only then does the west coast of Britain & Scotland
become second only to my region of the Pacific Northwest as ideal
rhododendron country.
Since my own penninsular Kitsap County riddled with salt inlets rather
than lochs, & adjacent Island County, are in many ways very much like
Scotland, what the Scottish rhody specialists & garden designers report
sounds totally sane & familiar & more easily accepted as truth than your
claim that in Scotland rhodies are planted as salt air barriers & all the
rhodies there like all the windows of Edinburgh must be coated in salt.
And you could be strapping on a dildo to fudgepack what you liken "owners"
of public or National Trust gardens, that wouldn't make your bold
assertion more likely, that in Scotland rhody hedges are planted to serve
as salt air barriers. Stephen's been there & knows you're fibbing; but
nobody needs to go there to know you're fibbing, no more than if I
asserted Pacific Salamanders live in the Pacific Ocean needs to be
believed until you come here & check it out for yourself. Not possible,
doesn't happen, they'd be dead.
My own home is a fifteen minute walk from uphill from Puget Sound & we
have a gorgeous view of Sinclair Inslet & Mount Rainier beyond. And we
have seasonal storms at hurricane speeds. And we have great luck with our
rhodies. That's because the salt cannot & does not reach the hilltop where
rhodies thrive, but down at the bottom of the slope those folks have to
settle for buddleia butterfly bushes & salt tolerant roses because the
seasonal dousing of salt spray does indeed kill rhodies. The nature of
rhodies is not only the same here as in Scotland, often the seedstocks &
the varieties are identical having been traded between our rhody societies
& the Foundation & the equivalent organizations in Scotland.
Less so from an American who
claims to have visited them.
You seem to be exhibiting Scottish Faery Logic. In your present state of
mind you construct a world view wherein Stephen can't possibly know what
the gardens are like because he HAS been to them, whereas I can't possibly
know because I have only read about them & their designers & looked at
pritty peektures. If nobody but you can know anything about these places
whether or not they've been there, it's no wonder your impressions vary so
much even from Mackenzie's -- as even those who laid 'em out can't
possibly know a thing about what they succeeded at doing.
Your repeat insistance that Stephen only "claims" to have been where he
went suggests that you expect people on these topics to be liars even
without basis for what sounds like an awfully malicious assumption on your
part. It makes me question YOUR claims of having done everything but
fudgepack the "owners" of public gardens, because people who expect
everyone else to be lying their asses off tend to be assessing others by
their own behavior, being immune to objective evidence. But even if you
had fudgepacked the "owners" of National Trust gardens, that is not a
basis of knowledge or accurate observation. I wish you could AT LEAST let
go of the cheapness of telling a chap recently back from Scotland he's
never been there, as I hate to think you really could be the sort of
person so steeped in dishonesty that you expect the same sorts of lying
from others.
I know a great deal about rhodies but if Stephen asserted something new to
me, I'd take it seriously, as he knows much more than I. Or you. Oso it's
not "patronage" to stick up for him; he & I have mutual acquaintances but
I don't know him personally from more than this ng & am not his friend or
patron, I know & like him no more or less than I know or like you. I do
know he knows what he's talking about, & it's curious to me you want to be
remain blind to some pretty reasonable expertise.
Btw, "beech" is a tree; the sandy place next to sea is spelled "beach".
The rhododendron you refer to as "pontus", is "ponticum".
And originally from the Pontus so also called Pontus Rhododendrons. But
when you reduce yourself to a spell flamer that's just despurate.
-paggers
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