"Atholl Palace is a wonderful place to visit. The staff are very helpful and polite, nothing is a problem! The food is amazing and the rooms are made up daily. This is great for either a weekend break or stay for a week. Great for couples or families. The spa is also brilliant and relaxing. Book now and stay, you won't be disappointed!"
November 2004
Recycling, waste disposal and general “green awareness” are buzz-words in political circles these days as we are all encouraged to become a bit more responsible about the waste we create in our everyday lives. It goes without saying that a large business like ours has more waste than most to consider and deal with.
Within the last year we have begun the process of minimal waste disposal by recycling as much as possible. Paper and cardboard are now separately packaged and collected fortnightly as are bottles and glass. All green kitchen waste that will breakdown is collected in special bins and added to our compost heaps, daily. To make the compost heaps work, we also add grass clippings, leaves and horse dung from time to time, the latter supplied from a local highland pony who has no idea how important her contributions are to the Atholl Palace gardens. Autumn leaves, not exactly waste in the excepted sense, have been gathered and made into a large pit and this will breakdown to supply excellent leaf-mould for next winter. The result of all this recycling is that the bin lorry collects two bins every second day, rather than the previous six and the gardens and grounds will benefit from large amounts of compost being dug-in to vegetable, rose and flower beds and, we hope, the benefits will begin to show through stronger plants.
Work on our various winter projects has been going on, apace. New lamps have been installed on the main stepway and now highlight the steps. The ground bordering the steps has been dug-over and prepared for the new rose beds, the rugosa roses have been moved to their new bed and we have made our decision about the trees which are to be planted up the stepway. We have settled on six birches. Not the wild birch common in the woods around here but speciality trees. The spectacular “betula youngii” a weeping type and four “utilis doorenbos” the lovely paper-bark, Himalayan birch.
In the herb-garden not much work has been done recently, we have been too busy looking and planning. We have ordered fifteen fruit trees to establish a small orchard. We are still trying to decide on which climbing roses we will use for the north fence and we have moved most of our home grown sweetwilliam and wallflower to their spring beds. Soon the task of digging over the vegetable plots will begin….now that’s a job for the frosty days!! Enjoy the gardens. Innes Smith
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