Gardens in Estonia

[Hkind]

I have visited Estonia several times in the end of the 1990-ies and the first years of the new century.  Estonia is a small country with suprisingly many interesting gardens.  But outside the Baltic countries, I believe, there are few who know anything about gardening in Estonia. Most famous are the many hardy Clematis cultivars from Estonia (Kivistik) http://www.hot.ee/roogoja/inglise%20roogoja%20talu.htm  - but there is much more.

Sulev Savisaar, who lives near Tartu in the country's southern part, has a huge collection of bulbs, pions and also some orchids.  Everything grows in the garden, often covered with saw dust. Last time I visited him (2003), he had obviously economical difficulties to keep the collection going. He speaks only Estonian and communication with him is difficult. So I don't know how his garden has been developing in recent years.

[Hkind]

Here is another Estonian garden - this one in the western part of the country.

 Atu Ruuth has a large rock garden, built of native lime stone slates. This limestone is quite common in Estonia and a wonderful material for many purposes.

In his garden I saw for the first time the strange - and highly attractive - Asphodeline taurica (last image in the message above) and the beautiful little Aquilegia ( Im 4), which he claimed was A glandulosa. I believe that he was wrong and that it is another species, maybe A parviflora. If you read this, Olga, could you please have a look?

More to come, if you are interested.

[Joakim B]

The gardens are lovely keep them coming:)
Kind regards
Joakim

[Hkind]

Thank you, Joakim!

Here is the next one:

Enno and Elle Ahse have a large garden on the hills outside Tartu. Their dream is to build an arboretum.  The first start is shown in the first image (Enno to the right and Elle to the left).

They have also a nice collection of perennials and in 2003 - the last time I visited them - they were building a rock garden in a sloping part of the garden.

Among the plants there were two from Siberia, which I found especially interesting, one a Selaginella sp  with a large rosette. The other is a plant I cannot identify at all. Can you? (last image).

[Maggi Young]

More lovely garden shots, Hannelotte, thank you.
You mystery plant in the last pic is the (lovely and still quite difficult to find) Pteridophyllum racemosum. It looks like a fern but used to be in Papaveraceae though it is now classed as Pteridophyllaceae.
The plant is evergreen, endemic to Japan and is a montypic genus. It  was mentioned in the old forum in May 2005 when Gote was searching for a source on this page:
http://www.srgc.org.uk/discus/messages/147/13878.html?1132849206

[Hkind]

Thank you a lot, Maggi!

The discussion in the old forum provided a lot of valuable information !!

[Joakim B]

Hannelotte nice pics
I am impressed with the orchids
The dachtylorhiza type was very purpor and not so pinkish as normally seen is that due to the picture or is the plnat that coloured?
Do You or anyone else know what it is?

Kind regards
Joakim