"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?"
September 2007
We are into October and the sweet peas are still flowering and the roses are blooming as well as they have done all summer and both give off the most enchanting scent.
It’s tempting after a few days of foul weather to say “well that’s it, let’s deal with the borders”. But wait a day or so and the sun returns and the late flowers re-emerge and all looks colourful. Rudbeckia, aster, phlox, gladiola and dahlia are all in full flower, adding that essential sparkle before weather does take over. Our recently planted heather bed has been very successful. The summer flowering plants have been out in all their glory and it’s not going to be too long before the individual plants knit together and form one continuous mat of colour….and we still have the winter flowering ones to look forward to.
I cut the ancient wisteria back, on the west side of the building, very hard last autumn. It had climbed to the roof of the building and was undermining gutters and slates. Would it come back? Well it has, the power of it’s underground root system took a while to kick into action this summer but pioneer shots have been growing at a rate of feet per week and it’s been trained to where we want it to grow not to where it wants to grow. It will be a stunner, again, in the next few years.
Many, many plants and shrubs are being planted out in our Japanese style garden. It won’t all be finished in one planting, some plants will fail, some will be in the wrong place and will need to be moved and new plants will be added in years to come but……it’s going to be a lovely place of peace, calm and water. It will open in the spring.
“Autumn gold” and “The Enchanted Forest” are nearly upon us, still time to enjoy our lovely gardens. Innes
acer.jpg)
