"The Atholl Palace is one of my favourite places where each year we meet up with good friends and have fun. It's the perfect place to stay in a perfect setting with lovely people looking after us. What more could a person want?"
August 2006
Gloriously hot weather has dominated us for the past few weeks. Well glorious for the guests who have been able to enjoy the Palace grounds at their best taking in the lovely views, the lawns to lie about on or the pools to cool down in….but for those of us who work outside the “muggy” nature of the weather has proved hard going, especially by mid-afternoon. A minor complaint about a really wonderful spell of weather.
With our own, private water supply from the slopes of Ben Vrackie we have poured many thousands of gallons of water onto the lawns, the flower beds, the shrubs and in the herb garden. We have almost finished the first stage of landscaping the new Highways apartments and the newly seeded lawns are green already, barely a week after seeding primarily due to the amount of water we have been able to sprinkle onto the seeded topsoil.
Our roses are continuing to cause us a little concern. Perhaps the euphoria of last year, our first year with roses, was never going to be repeated and we are settling into having to work a lot harder with these beautiful but finnicky plants to produce the blooms that we expect. The sweet peas have rallied and are now producing their annual bounty for the inside vases. Dahlia’s are beginning to bloom. The lilies of many varieties are simply stunning and montbretia, phlox, campanula and much more are in full flower.A particular favourite of mine, Jasmine "clotted cream", is about to flower for the first time on the south wing of the hotel, great things are expected from this vigorous climber over the coming years....sniff it!. The hanging baskets and troughs are growing on well, later than some around the town but we fully expect them to last longer and well into the autumn.
The putting green, well……it’s still developing. The main sward is thick and weed free but we have some maddening patches within the sward that we are having great difficulty in persuading to grow. Any knowledgeable green-keeper who reads this would be more than welcome to offer us their advice. But we will get there and a lovely putting green will appear….but perhaps not until next year.
The Palace grounds are at their stunning best just now. Aside from the sun drenched lawn areas you can wander down into our woodland path network and sit for a while in the cool of the big trees. A new buck has taken up residence within the grounds and he and his “wives” can be seen most evenings around the front lawn. Check out the buddleia bushes for butterflies some of which have more than a dozen peacocks feeding on them at any one time and a red squirrel will never be far away and may offer you the closest view you ever likely to get of this, cheery wee fellow. Innes
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