Rhododendrons and Azaleas

RHODODENDRONS AND AZALEAS

The first rhododendron I came across was R. praecox growing in a large drift in a bed of pure leafmould. This was at Dawson Park in 1960 when the park was in its early years and was not much more than a playing field with a few interesting plants to relieve the boredom. I won’t ever forget my first two years apprenticeship training, digging drains all winter at Dawson.  The highlight of the year was when that rhododendron flowered and that only lasted a couple of weeks, but it must have made an impact on me as I have never been without my R. praecox. It is one of the first to flower usually in March or early April but only if there are no frosts to shrivel up the delicate mauve flowers.

The following year I was working at Camperdown Park where mature rhododendrons grew all over the place. Training trips in spring arranged for the apprentices by our tutor Walter Gilmore took us to Edinburgh Botanical Gardens and Crarae Gardens where both Rhodos and Azaleas are grown on a massive scale but to perfection. I was hooked for life. Parks training helped me understand the range from the tall varieties to the dwarf evergreens and the deciduous azaleas, and that first bed at Dawson growing in pure leafmould made me realise the importance of giving them the correct type of acidic soil.

Today we do not have to go too far to see them in all their glory growing in natural surroundings covering the whole spring season. The gardens at Glendoick are now world famous as the place to visit to see hundreds of different rhodos, azaleas, camellias and numerous other woodland plants growing in a natural setting of a Scottish glen complete with a burn and waterfalls.

History

No article on rhododendrons and azaleas would be complete without some reference to the massive contribution made by several generations of the Cox family.

In the early nineteenth century the Cox family started a textile business in Lochee. This was consolidated by four Cox brothers in 1841 and the factory at Camperdown Works was reputed to be the biggest jute factory in the world employing 5000 people. Alfred Cox bought Glendoick House and estate in 1899. His son Euan, educated at Rugby and Cambridge, got a taste for the good life while working in London and had little enthusiasm to return to the jute business in Dundee.

A chance meeting in London with the plant explorer Reginald Farrer led Euan to join him in his first plant collecting expedition to Burma in 1919. The trip was a great success and many new rhododendrons and other plants were introduced. Euan loved to write about the new plants being introduced from all over the world and founded a bookshop in London. However this got bombed during the war and Euan returned to Scotland to help run the family jute business. He started to develop the gardens around Glendoick with his new seedlings from his expedition. He also subscribed to other expeditions and received many new plant introductions. A nursery was started with new plants acquired from other collections. Then his son Peter started to go on plant collecting expeditions to Turkey, India then China in 1981. The garden at Glendoick expanded up the burn.

The rhododendron nursery was established in 1953 and the garden centre in 1973.

Peter’s son Kenneth has maintained the family traditions with 9 plant collecting expeditions and written many horticultural books. Peter and Kenneth have been breeding rhododendrons for over 50 years to produce plants suited to small gardens and the Scottish climate.

For the full and fascinating story of Glendoick, the Cox family, and their involvement with rhododendrons and plant exploration, check out the website at www.glendoick.com.

Types and varieties

Most Rhododendrons are evergreen but the Azaleas may be evergreen or deciduous. They come in all sizes from a few inches tall to small tree sizes given time. Many of the deciduous azaleas, eg A. luteum are scented. The flowering season normally runs from April to June, but changes due to weather pattern at the time, and there is always a few types that will flower early or later throughout the summer. R. praecox can flower in late March but the flowers are not frost hardy so can get wiped out in a bad year.

If you have a large garden you can indulge some of the taller growing varieties such as Cynthia, a vivid scarlet, Pink Pearl, or Horizon Monarch a yellow with red buds.

For smaller gardens try Nancy Evans, a deep yellow, or Elizabeth, a brilliant red that has been a favourite for years.

Azaleas tend to flower a bit later, but many have an exotic woodland scent and orange flowers such as Gibraltar. Klondyke is a brilliant yellow and there are numerous others in reds, pinks, mauves and white.

Dwarf evergreen azaleas (Japanese azaleas) may only grow a couple of feet or so after ten years, but they are perfect for mass planting for ground cover. They are also very easy to propagate from cuttings. Glendoick have bred numerous new varieties in colours including pink, purple, scarlet, white, orange and crimson.

Site soil and planting

Most Rhododendrons and azaleas flower better in full sun in Scotland as we don’t suffer too many very hot summers. They associate well as woodland fringe plants with a backdrop of birch, rowan, pine, spruce or if you wish a flowering tree choose a cherry or Eucryphia Rostrevor. However make sure they are not shaded by the canopy.

An acid soil is a must with all of these plants. Fortunately most soils in this area are naturally acidic, but may have been limed for previous crops. They like a free draining soil that can hold moisture. Soils can be improved by digging in plenty of leafmould, composted bark, garden compost, pine needles or peat. Acidity can be improved by using sulphur chips and a pre planting light dressing of sulphate of ammonia and sulphate of iron, but not after planting as they may scorch young leaves.

Plant rootballed plants in the dormant season, but containerised bushes can be planted at any time provided they are always kept moist. Do not plant deep and any mulch should only be quite shallow as the fine surface roots do not like getting buried.

Rhododendrons and azaleas do not need much feeding, so a light annual mulch will be quite enough.

Pests and diseases

Mildew may be a problem on a few varieties, (Elizabeth is prone) but can be controlled with a fungicide used for rose mildew.

Azalea leaf gall, exobasidium, can be a problem on the Japanese evergreen dwarf azaleas. Pick off and destroy any galls as soon as you see them.

Vine weevil adults cut notches around leaves and can girdle the stem just above ground level. They produce white grubs that eat the roots.

Lime induced chlorosis is only a problem where the soil is not acidic enough.

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Internet Gardening

INTERNET GARDENING

The first week in December is turning out to be the perfect time to talk about internet gardening. There has been so much snow dropped during the last week in November that you can forget even seeing where the garden is. The allotment is inaccessible due to blocked roads and the cold greenhouse has over a foot of frozen snow on it.

As I write this wee feature in the comfort of my warm home I look out onto a black sky about to offload another six inches of snow, then, when it clears thirty minutes later, and the sun comes out to show a brilliant winter wonderland.

The early winter was well forecast, so ample provisions have been acquired from my allotment to see us through a few weeks of bad weather.

Probably by the time you read this all the snow will have melted, and the winter jasmine will be in full flower, but then again I could be wrong.

Over the last ten years or so I became part of that fast growing band of silver haired surfers. Schools teach computer studies from primary age, so our kids are well versed up in internet technology.  My generation has a lot to catch up on and although there is plenty courses in basic computing, it is not easy to adapt to this new technology when you have never ever put a finger on a keyboard.

Looking back it has been a huge struggle to learn computing language and practices, but when you have the basics mastered a new world opens up that has no boundaries.

We are now at the stage where just about anything you want to know about gardening or anything else is just a few clicks away, and if you want to chat to like minded people who may know the answer to your gardening problems you just join any number of forums dedicated to your topics of interest.

There are still very many people who have not as yet embraced the internet revolution so I will add a few words of encouragement to try and get a few started.

My first steps

Fear of stumbling into the unknown held me back in many areas of modern life, but I always got there eventually. I was the last to get a colour TV, the last to get a microwave, video, digital radio,   digital camera and I still play my LP records and we still enjoy our terrestrial TV. One day I will get a mobile phone, but no great rush.

However I was more determined to get a computer as I thought it would help me sell my paintings and prints if I had a website. That would bring me into the modern world if I could handle the massive learning curve.

About ten years ago I enrolled onto an evening class for basic computing learning a wee bit about all the parts and how they worked. Still not enough to get me started.

I found another course on learning to surf and search the internet. I was getting better but was very slow as the keyboard, which I had never used before, really had me baffled. It took me nearly ten minutes to find the letters to type my name, and don’t expect them to start with capitals. I hadn’t got that far yet.

The next year I enrolled on another course, “Computing for the Terrified”. Now I felt more comfortable with that, but then I was subjected to a host of new terminology that was hard to get a grip on. Now I am a Scotsman and I know what a bar is for, but task bar, address bar, tool bar, menu bar, navigation bar, status bar. Give me a break !!!

The young lady sitting next to me was very helpful as she helped me to find the key called shift. She was planning to go on the new course, “European Computer Driving License” That was excellent advice. A new venture to try, so I enrolled at Kingsway Tech and started to broaden my knowledge base, to include scanning and printing.

At this time Dundee Business Gateway was running a series of courses on computers, the internet and website building for small businesses, so yet again this very determined lad enrolled on all of them. I got enough information on just what to look for to buy my first computer with confidence. Now I could practice all these lessons I had been taught. Before long I was searching, emailing, scanning, adding pictures from my camera, printing, booking buses, trains, holidays, and building up a list of my favourite sites that I look at frequently. I think I was ready to build my own website.

My website

The course at Business Gateway showed you how to build two pages with text and images which then linked to each other. More information was added on optimization to help your site get found by Google. If I could create a two page website it was easy to add more pages as the need arose. The format was just the same.

My site which I called www.johnstoa.com started of as four pages for paintings, and the same for prints, but then I added one for art classes, one for exhibitions and there was always a need for more.

My garden had always been a source for paintings, so I started to add garden pages. As I searched the web for interesting websites relevant to art and gardening these got added into a links page.

My site is now over two hundred pages and big enough, but since I do a fair bit of gardening research I needed somewhere to document these activities. I now incorporate all my gardening activities into these features for the Dundee Courier and archive them in date order in a new blog.

Each one has its own heading so topics can easily be extracted. Since it is my intention to add my artwork activities as well as gardening my blog is called, the “Scottish artist and his garden”.

Learning computing has been a big uphill struggle, but a lot of the problem was lack of keyboard skills. The end result was opening up a new way of living where the computer is used for every aspect of life from checking the weather, the roads, artists and art galleries, cooking recipes, history, geography, cinemas, football results, lottery results, (still waiting on the big one), music and telephoning family and friends with Skype, and off course gardening.

Garden Sites

Every worthwhile nursery, garden centre, grower and product supplier has a website. So do Botanical gardens, the Royal Horticultural Society, stately homes, research institutes and numerous allotment sites.

If you wish to find information, a picture or where you can buy a plant just go to Google and type in the common or botanical name and browse through the result pages. Pests, diseases, weed control, pruning, planting, composts, greenhouses, sheds, fences, polythene and numerous other products are all ready to find.

Whenever you find a really good site that you wish to refer to again at a later date you can right click the home page and save it to your favourites list.

You can look up local garden centres such as www.glendoick.com or www.dobbies.com  or if you wish to look up specialist plant growers I have happily used all of the following.

There are many excellent rose growers including www.davidaustinroses.com and his daughter Claire has a really good hardy plant nursery at www.claireaustin-hardyplants.co.uk.

I grow lots of fruit so a good grower with lots of information on his website is www.kenmuir.co.uk,

and I have been buying my chrysanthemums from Harold Walker for nearly twenty years. See his site at www.walkersplantcentre.co.uk and if you want the best nursery for begonias, polyanthus or delphiniums try www.blackmore-langdon.com. They are not cheap but you will get excellent plants.

When you need to protect your crops from birds with netting or you need plant pots or trays or many other garden products try www.lbsgardenwarehouse.co.uk. 

Education and Research and Allotments

Our own Dundee botanical gardens can be found at www.dundee.ac.uk/botanic  and for the latest in crops research browse over the website of the Scottish Crops Research Institute at www.scri.ac.uk

This is research at commercial levels but for garden information on everything, you cannot beat the Royal Horticultural Society website at www.rhs.org.uk

There are many allotment sites worth checking out. Try www.allotment.org.uk which has links to everything you are likely to grow except saskatoons. You will need to try my website for that.

Then check out both the National Society at www.nsalg.org.uk and the Scottish Society at www.sags.org.uk

You will soon find there is a wealth of great sites to browse round. Enjoy them.

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