Branklyn Gardens

[TC]

We always enjoy the Perth show because it can be coupled with a visit to Branklyn and then Cox's nursery at Glendoick.  Despite all my best intentions of just admiring the plants at Cox's, I came away with a Rh.Edgeworthii and  Rh. Winsome.  I have not a spare inch of garden left to put them in, but.......
Branklyn was looking the best I have seen it at this time of year.  The flowering season seems to have been compressed with the earlier varieties still in flower and the later varieties, (which we would expect in May), flowering up to 3 weeks earlier.  The Rh.Augustinii was magnificent as the picture will show.
As usual, not all the plant labels could be found and I do not like guessing.
These series of garden visits are really meant for our forum readers abroad who cannot visit the gardens.
I always enjoy looking at pictures from gardens that I am unlikely to visit.  The web now makes this an easy matter.  On the West coast, we are now enjoying what I euphemistically call Rhododendron weather
After about ten days of warm sunny weather, we are now in a spell of cloudy drizzle with little wind.  This should keep the blooms on longer.  However, not ideal for taking photographs or walking round gardens.
If any of the forum members would like a larger image from any of the garden Rhoddy series, let me know and we can arrange it. 

[TC]

The last missive self posted before I even started on the pictures.  It probably has a verbose program that limits the amount of words.  Here are some of the pictures, I hope.

[TC]

I have been trying to find the names of some of the Rhododendrons without visible labels without much success.  I had forgotten the variability inherent in seed grown plants collected from different locations so some will still have to be nameless unless anyone out there can put a name to them

[ian mcenery]

Tom wonderful piccies of  a magic garden. I have been twice and wished I lived a little  nearer as there are some superb Rhodos including my favourite foliage ones at Branklyn
Keep em coming

[Maggi Young]

My brain cells are not working well, so I'm not able to give some names that I know I should... but I can say that the R. albrechtii is not that. R. albrechtii has more azalea type foliage, if you know what I mean, can't remember the section, is it Triflora? Sorry, not much help!

[TC]

Correct again Maggi.  For some reason I have named this on the main picture as possibly Williamsianum type.  When I downsized it, for some reason I called it Albrechtii.  It so happens that the Albrechtii was Cindy's favourite so here are the flowers and the plant to clear up the matter - this was one plant that had an obvious label.  As an afterthought, I have removed the wrongly named picture and added the correct one here

[TC]

Visisted Branklyin again on Friday.  Some Meconopsis pictures in Meconopsis now. Although the Rhododendrons were almost over, new plants were taking their place.   The following are just a selection of what is now in flower or in attractive foliage.

[TC]

It was only recently that I twigged the difference between the Mag. sieboldii and wilsonii flowers.  The wilsonii flowers hang down, the sieboldii flowers are at right angles to the ground and the watsonii flowers point up the way.  Not bad after looking at them for about 45 years !!!  Branklyn looks good at almost any time of year as there is a huge concentration of plants.  No doubt we will be back in late summer for some more.
This afternoon we took a trip to our local park ( it's too big to call a garden ) at Culzean some 12 miles down the coast.
We took a walk up a path we used to take our children some 30 years ago and came across groves of rhododendrons I had completely forgotten about.  Some of these came from Achamore gardens when the Trust took over the Horlick's collection.  Several of the plants are almost overgrown with ferns and native woodland plants such as raspberries.
We even found, deep in the woods, large leaved varieties like falconeri that I vaguely remember as about 4 feet tall.  These are now about 30 feet high. Even further in I came across a stand of tree ferns amoungst our native ferns, these were surrounded by some giant fir trees well over 100 feet high.  Must investigate this next spring.