Arduaine Garden has matured into a wonderful and peaceful place with a special atmosphere which is commented on by many people. Our visitors find that the personal atmosphere of a private garden is still very much alive at Arduaine garden and in an age of large-scale tourist attractions this is what we strive to maintain.
As the headland is open to all the winds that blow, the garden hides behind a shelterbelt of exotic conifers and native broadleaves that keeps out the worst of the wind and salt spray and allows us, with a little help from Mother Nature and the North Atlantic Drift, to grow many tender plants.
Although known primarily in rhododendron circles as a good species collection, Arduaine Garden is far more than this. We admit to being biased in favour of plants from the temperate parts of East Asia and South America, but the range of vegetation here is much more extensive than that and something can be found here from every continent, with the exception of Antarctica. Now there's a challenge!
West coast gardens are always spectacular in the spring and Arduaine is no exception. Particularly good for rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and magnolias the garden is breath-taking in April and May, or earlier in some years, and a cool spring evening among the scented Maddenia rhododendrons is something to remember. What gives Arduaine that extra value is our long summer and autumn season of perennials and flowering shrubs so that the discerning visitor will find something in bloom on every day of the year. Dare we make that a promise?
In addition to being a wonderful tourist destination for visitors to Argyll, Arduaine is an exciting garden for serious plant enthusiasts as we grow many unusual and tender things not commonly seen. Although we may have the climate to experiment with 'exotica', we do bear in mind that the previous owners have never attempted to turn it into a Logan or a Tresco and so the general feeling is of a broad-leaved, cool-temperate down-to-earth garden - we do grow palms and tree ferns but oh so discreetly!
The garden is also important as a collection of plant species, many having been collected in the wild or having descended vegetatively from plants collected in the wild. There's a certain conservation value in this which is part of the remit of The National Trust for Scotland of course. This feature of the garden is less well-known and the Trust would like it to be more widely appreciated - it's disappointing to be seen merely as a pretty garden and not as the great plant collection that Arduaine certainly is.
As the headland is open to all the winds that blow, the garden hides behind a shelterbelt of exotic conifers and native broadleaves that keeps out the worst of the wind and salt spray and allows us, with a little help from Mother Nature and the North Atlantic Drift, to grow many tender plants.
Although known primarily in rhododendron circles as a good species collection, Arduaine Garden is far more than this. We admit to being biased in favour of plants from the temperate parts of East Asia and South America, but the range of vegetation here is much more extensive than that and something can be found here from every continent, with the exception of Antarctica. Now there's a challenge!
West coast gardens are always spectacular in the spring and Arduaine is no exception. Particularly good for rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and magnolias the garden is breath-taking in April and May, or earlier in some years, and a cool spring evening among the scented Maddenia rhododendrons is something to remember. What gives Arduaine that extra value is our long summer and autumn season of perennials and flowering shrubs so that the discerning visitor will find something in bloom on every day of the year. Dare we make that a promise?
In addition to being a wonderful tourist destination for visitors to Argyll, Arduaine is an exciting garden for serious plant enthusiasts as we grow many unusual and tender things not commonly seen. Although we may have the climate to experiment with 'exotica', we do bear in mind that the previous owners have never attempted to turn it into a Logan or a Tresco and so the general feeling is of a broad-leaved, cool-temperate down-to-earth garden - we do grow palms and tree ferns but oh so discreetly!
The garden is also important as a collection of plant species, many having been collected in the wild or having descended vegetatively from plants collected in the wild. There's a certain conservation value in this which is part of the remit of The National Trust for Scotland of course. This feature of the garden is less well-known and the Trust would like it to be more widely appreciated - it's disappointing to be seen merely as a pretty garden and not as the great plant collection that Arduaine certainly is.
