"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!"
Jan 2006
One of the joys of gardening, either in a professional capacity or in your own garden, is planning ahead for the coming season. Trying to remember mistakes or schemes that didn’t quite work as you would have liked is a common theme. Flicking through catalogues is sure to inspire you with hope and plans for the future and nowadays there seems to be a bewildering array of plants and seeds from which you can choose.
At the Palace we have quickly realised that some plants thrive with us whilst others don’t, a common enough problem known to virtually all gardeners. There are ways to rectify this, one is to strive to make the conditions more suitable for plants that fail and the other is to forget the failures and try something else. We, unashamedly, prefer the latter although moving a sickly plant often works.
And so to ordering the plants which we hope will provide that “little bit extra” this coming season. With our growing selection of home-grown perennials providing material to split and take cuttings from to supply us with our border replacements it is the ever-increasing demand for “cut-flowers” for inside the hotel which is attracting most of our attention. Sweet peas we grow from seed. Last year’s very successful dahlias and gladiola are stored away for the winter although a quick look the other day showed worrying signs of mould invading some of the boxes.We shall order a small selection of new tubers as a hedge against disaster. Early lillies have already been planted in the “cut-flower” border with the later flowering varieties
for spring planting still to be selected.Some of the early flowering iris’ look interesting . A new plant we are keen to try is the large flowering chrysanthemum, it of the show bench. We have ordered a dozen or so plants to see how they do with us and to see if the catalogue pictures match up to reality.
At a time of year when darkness can linger long into the morning and return far too early in the afternoon I hope all keen gardeners reading this diary are getting as much pleasure as we do from planning for the coming season and dreaming of colour filled flower-beds and endless hours of summer sunshine. Innes
acer.jpg)
