J​ust before Christmas, but now what seems like a lifetime ago, I joined Arduaine Garden as Head Gardener, filling the not inconsiderable large boots of my predecessor Gregor Anderson. By means of an introduction, and to explain the title of this piece to the curious amongst you it refers to a book I was involved with many years ago whilst Head Gardener of the wonderful subtropical Lamorran House Gardens in Cornwall. After a few years at Oxford Botanic Garden joining the team at Arduaine is a welcome return to familiar territory, growing exotic and tender plants on the Western fringes of the British Isles.

A passion for plants from milder climates was formed during my student days at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew where I spent as much time as possible in the Temperate House familiarising myself with tender Rhododendrons and unusual species from Australia and South America. Subsequently much of my working life has been spent in coastal gardens, I also cared for the splendid gardens at Walmer Castle on the Kent coast for some years.

The Arduaine Friends have donated generously to help Arduaine Garden carry out a new orchard project. The purpose of this project is to create an orchard on land that historically has been outside the garden and used for agricultural purposes. This land was acquired with money raised by donations, including a substantial one from the Jeniam Foundation, and since then it has been managed lightly to encourage wildlife.

Over the years bracken has dominated this area and last year a new orchard was planned to make better use of this land.

Arduaine Garden originally had a food production element to it, but that has been lost as the focus shifted to more decorative plantings. The creation of an orchard brings the external field back in to food production and as it is external to the fenced area of the garden, it will be left open for the local community to use the produce.
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The varieties of apples have been carefully selected for this site, grown on semi dwarfing rootstocks to suit our climate and supplied mostly as Maiden stems, for better establishment in this exposed location. The varieties will be labelled to indicate which are culinary (cooking) and dessert (eating) as both types have been planted. In total there are 47 trees, 40 apples, 4 plums and 3 Damsons all listed in the table below.

Arduaine Garden staff will shape, prune and maintain these trees, and they have been laid out in such a way that if they grow more vigorously than intended, they can be thinned and reduced in number to allow for better development and health of the individual trees while keeping the number of varieties. Fruit may appear this year in very small quantities, but it will be 5- 10 years before any significant quantity is produced, so please be patient!

In the next few weeks protective wire cages will be fitted to the trees to reduce animal browsing and a weed suppressing mulch will be applied on top of biodegradable coir mat to help with successful establishment.

I would like to thank the Arduaine Friends for the donation of £2000 that made this project possible. I hope everyone can enjoy the fruit grown in this orchard for years to come.
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Gregor Anderson.

​Arduaine Gardens long running Shelterbelt renewal project reached an important milestone on the 25th of October 2022, when the last of 1035 Larch trees was removed. The project has been going on now for 5 years to comply with a Statutory Plant Health Notice, issued by the Forestry Commission after the destructive plant pathogen Phytophthora ramorum was discovered and confirmed in the gardens Larch trees. It has been a considerable challenge to remove these trees without damaging Arduaine’s collection of Rhododendron sp, and other exotic shrubs which were planted beneath, and most of the trees have been dismantled and carefully lowered using rigging techniques by trained and experienced NTS arborists from Mar Lodge, garden staff and external contractors, which has been a time consuming and laborious process.

​A consequence of removing a large part of the gardens wind protection has been vulnerability to damage from strong winds and storms as seen below. In early 2022 a series of storms blew over 28 mature non-Larch trees and many shrubs causing significant damage. Assessment of the remaining non-Larch trees concluded that there was significant risk of further wind instability, and the garden has been closed until a secondary phase of the shelterbelt project to remove a further 54 mature hardwoods, pines and spruce has been carried out. This is now well underway and is expected to be completed by March 2023 which will allow the garden to re-open in April 2023 and replanting to begin.

​While work continues the secondary project, garden staff are carrying out ground clearance following on from felling operations to move timber and burn Larch branches. Inaccessible timber is being left in situ or cut into smaller logs to allow stacking for habitat piles. Non- Larch branches are being chipped to add to the thin, poor Arduaine soils. This work will continue throughout 2023 to allow replanting work to begin in October.
As the felling stages of the Shelterbelt Project are coming to an end, planning is underway for replanting and developing the garden. Much of what was the woodland garden will be replanted again with trees and shrubs but this time with an emphasis on species diversity so that the impact of new diseases will hopefully be less damaging for the gardens collection. New material will be provided by RBGE, specialist nurseries and from other trust properties to replant botanically interesting, new specimens to strengthen our collection and replace losses due to storm damage. 

​When the garden re-opens in April, frequent visitors to the garden will no doubt be shocked by how it looks now. The removal of so many mature Larch had a huge impact on the garden, but the remaining trees and large shrubs lessened that impact. With losses and extensive damage caused by storms and the secondary project to remove potentially unstable trees, the woodland garden is no longer a woodland and will be a decade at least before it begins to become one again.
 
It has been a difficult and often demoralising task to carry out this work and garden staff are now looking forward to replanting and the rebuilding phases of the project. This will be the last update with pictures of fallen trees and felling. Arduaine Garden is entering a new phase of exciting and intensive redevelopment with significant investment from the NTS and private donors. If you would like to contribute, you can do so by contacting [email protected] .
Gregor Anderson

Dear Friends of Arduaine Garden,
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​Hope this finds you all well. Apologies for the lack of communication from us but with the Garden being closed there has been very little to share. We had hoped that at least the Lower Garden would open by 1st August but our hopes were dashed.
Head Gardner, Gregor Anderson walked me round the garden a couple of weeks ago to show me the progress to date and the size of challenge ahead. All things being equal we now hope the garden will re-open early in the new year. More information to follow soon.
On another matter, Neil McKinnon contacted me and asked me to forward the message to you. I have spoken to him about Arduaine and he has assured me that he will do all that he can to support the Garden if he is elected.  Please see below the information supplied from Neil. 
National Trust for Scotland – Trustee Election 
Neil MacKinnon is standing for election as a Trustee of the National Trust for Scotland at the upcoming AGM on September 24th.
Neil originally hails from Oban and has a very strong family connection with Argyll. He now lives in Kent and has been a Life Member of the NTS for over 40 years. As you may well be aware, the centenary of the NTS is only a few years away. There is a big focus on developing Canna and making the Gaelic archives in Canna House more accessible to a wider audience as a key centenary project. This particular project is likely to resonate with many of our members and is one of the reasons why Neil is standing for election (as Canna is a place that is very special to him personally too) as well as promoting greater engagement with Scots outwith Scotland. 
The NTS AGM voting paper which was circulated to all NTS members about a couple of months ago, together with the Summer edition of the quarterly magazine. It contains a profile of Neil and outlines why he is standing for election as a Trustee. Neil would very much appreciate it if you could take the time to consider him for this role. 

Thank you for your continued membership of and support for Arduaine Friends.

Calum Ross
Chair of Arduaine Friends

Due to the current tree felling operation, Arduaine Garden will not open until the end of 2022

Click here to Arduaine Garden is closed until further notice, to allow staff to carry out essential forestry work necessary for safe access to the public.
Work has been going on for the past 5 years to remove Larch trees from our windbreak to comply with a Statutory Plant Health Notice which was issued because of the presence of Phytophthora ramorum. This is a fungal like organism which causes dieback and death in a wide range of trees and shrubs, but particularly affects Larch, which made up 90% of our windbreak. Work to remove this Larch is almost complete.
The remaining 10% of trees which were planted at the same time as the Larch have now become vulnerable to wind damage because the protection, they once had from other trees has now gone, and the soils here are thin. It has become difficult to predict when these trees will fall, and some have blown down in moderate winds with no warning. We have lost many trees due to the recent storms too, which will take months to clear. Until the remaining vulnerable trees have been removed or reduced, and the fallen trees have been cleared, it will not be safe for visitors to access the Garden.
Work to remove the vulnerable trees will be carried out in the same careful manner that we have employed in the removal of the Larch trees. We will remove or reduce trees by climbing them to carefully lower cut sections using rigging techniques to minimise damage to our nationally important collection of Rhododendron’s. This work is done by trained NTS staff and skilled contractors who have worked with us over the last 5 years.
The work to reopen the garden will be carried out in two stages.
The first stage of this work will enable the lower part of the garden to reopen to the public. We anticipate that this could take months and the lower garden may not open again until the end of summer.
The second stage which will allow the rest of the garden to be opened will not be completed until 2023.
Gregor Anderson
27/02/2022
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This year for the first time Arduaine Garden will be closed to visitors over the winter months. The garden will close at 4pm on September the 30th and reopen on April 1st, 2022.
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During the next 6 months the remaining Japanese Larch within the garden will be removed to comply with a Statutory Plant Health Notice which expires in March 2022. Closure will allow us to carry out this last stage efficiently and safely and we hope to make up for being a year behind in both felling and clear up due to staffing shortages, and the loss of volunteering groups due to Covid. We have just over 400 trees to remove and to help us complete the task we are now going to bring in a forestry harvester to work on the strip on the Southern boundary which will remove 280 trees. The remaining Larch will be removed by time consuming climbing and rigging techniques to protect the plant collection beneath. 

​During the summer we managed to continue with project work at the same time as normal garden maintenance. Previous work has opened the garden up to wind damage and we are beginning to see the effects of this. Recently we have had damage to a large Griselinia littoralis which loomed over our reception building. The whole tree had to be cut down and it will be left to regrow as a low pollard.

Some trees which were already weak were inspected and removed as a precaution. A large Norway Maple at the garden house was removed because it had been weakened by disease and rot and could have fallen without the protection of the surrounding Larch. In the lower garden a previously wind damaged Robinia hispida was removed as it was vulnerable to strong winds and situated over a main path.

During the summer, staff carried out further identification work on our Rhododendron collection, spending 4 days surveying and verifying with experts David Chamberlain and Ian Sinclair. This work is continuing into next year and will be useful when we begin replanting the woodland garden next year as we make decisions on which Rhododendrons we will propagate and improve the collection.

I am looking forward to the end of the felling stage of the Shelterbelt Renewal Project. It will be good to move on to replanting and improving the garden once again. Material for replanting will be sourced and ordered early next year and replanting will begin in the winter of 2022/23. By opening in Spring next year, the garden will look very different and will be much more open and less protected from the wind. To counter this in the short term we will be building lath windbreaks to protect against low level winds until the new shelter belt establishes. Construction of these new windbreaks will begin this year and will be completed in 2022.

We will have help in this from our new apprentice gardener Rebecca, who started at the beginning of September. Over the next two years Rebecca will be learning about our important plant collection and will receive practical on the job training from our experienced team as well as attending college. She has come at an important time in the garden’s development, and I am glad that she can be here to be a part of that.
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Gregor Anderson