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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. |
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