Camperdown Park

CAMPERDOWN PARK

Dundee folk have always loved Camperdown Park. It has such a wide variety of interests for people of all ages for leisure, play, gardening and numerous events are held regularly.

You can play golf, tennis, go for a long woodland walk around the park and over the road into Templeton woods then onto Clatto reservoir. Young children have a huge play area with boating pond and a zoo that keeps getting bigger, and for those who love an outdoor career the Council employs gardeners, nurserymen, greenkeepers, gamekeepers and foresters to look after this huge country park.

History

A few hundred years ago it was quite fashionable for one country to expand into another through invasion. The British developed the Commonwealth countries and the French had a go with the Napoleonic wars. The Dutch and French began to amass a navy and made the British a bit uneasy that we could become invaded. However we had a very experienced navy involved in maritime activities worldwide, and to maintain control of the seas around our island.

Adam Duncan was born in the High Street in Dundee in 1731, educated at Dundee High School, (a grammar school then), and joined the navy at fifteen years old. He was involved in numerous sea battles all over the world and quickly rose up the ranks becoming first lord of the Admiralty.

He set sail for the waters off Holland with a small fleet of 16 ships. The Dutch fleet under Admiral de Winter was amassing a continental army to invade Britain. Admiral Adam Duncan engaged their fleet just off the Dutch coast at Kamperduin on 11^th October 1797. Instead of using the normal naval battle tactics of each ship taking on its opposite opponent in a battle line, he sailed straight into and through their line assisted by bad weather creating poor visibility. The Dutch fleet could no longer flee back to the safety of their harbour as Duncan’s ships blocked their passage, and blew a lot of them out of the water. The battle was won in just under three hours.

His success and bravery were recognised with an annual pension of £3000 and a title of Viscount Camperdown, with lands at Camperdown, Templeton and Clatto.

Admiral Duncan’s son Robert built Camperdown house in 1828, though it took four years to build. He also planted up the woodlands adding numerous unusual specimen trees to the collection.

Several generations of the family lived there till 1937 and after the contents were sold off in an auction in 1941 the Dundee Corporation bought the house and estate in 1946.

Facilities

The management of the Camperdown estate was put in the hands of the Parks Department who over time developed it into a place where Dundee residents can go for their leisure and recreation.

Fifty years ago the development work was going ahead at full speed and Dundee’s numerous apprentices all played a part. Massive mature trees had to be removed during the creation of the golf course fairways, some so big that the roots had to be blasted out of the ground with gelignite. Woodland trees were chopped down to create the woodland walk around the perimeter.

The zoo started off beside the big house with a few ducks and goats managed by one gamekeeper, and the land where the present zoo exists was a nursery with fields growing potatoes, cabbage and Swedes to feed the animals in the expanding zoo. The gamepeeper got quite alarmed when he heard there was talk of acquiring a bear and a couple of lions. The perimeter six foot chain link fence might not be strong enough to keep them in and they might not be too happy with a diet of Swedes and winter cabbage.

The walled in nursery lost its growing fields and a new zoo was built complete with bear but without those lions. The zoo has now been revamped again with modern facilities.

The golf course has always been popular with fantastic views over the Tay between drifts of mature woodland, and Children’s leisure has been addressed with a huge award winning play area, and boating pond.

Woodland walks now take in Templeton woods and Clatto reservoir. There is an excellent mature pinetum to the west of the mansion and to the east there are many mature specimens of exotic trees including cedars, giant redwoods, sweet chestnut, weeping ash and now the original specimen of the weeping Camperdown elm is protected with its own enclosure.

Nurseries

Dundee Parks dept grows its own trees, shrubs, roses, bedding plants and flowering plants for civic decoration at the glasshouses and nursery in Camperdown Park. This is an excellent training ground for young gardeners keen to learn propagation and how to grow and use garden plants.

Events

The public have really taken to Camperdown Park. It is absolutely mobbed at Easter and during the annual Flower and Food Festival the first week in September, (this year it is from Friday 2^nd September to Sunday 4^th September).

Other events from car rallies, pipe bands to half marathons are held throughout the year.

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Time for a Clean Up

 TIDYING UP

The early summer gales only lasted a couple of days, but the effects in the garden will be felt for the rest of the year. So much young soft spring foliage was shredded that the plants have been weakened and will now be more prone to attacks of pests and diseases. Most plants will regrow again quite strongly if the weather warms up a bit. We have had plenty of rain to keep the garden moist, but not a lot of warm sunshine.

This is also the time of year when we do a tidy up of spring bulb flowering drifts, so the summer flowers can start off with fresh weed free soil.

Time for a clean up

I had just finished cutting back dead wood from numerous shrubs that were killed off after the cold winter when along came the gale and nature had another go at thinning out my garden. More pruning is now needed for my plum tree, peach tree, figs, shrubby loniceras, and climbing roses. The gales broke the main stems from a large lemon yellow flowering broom, Cytisus praecox. It was part of a group of flowering shrubs including many Cistus varieties all enjoying a dry sunny spot, but most died out in the winter, opening up the group and letting the gales smash into the normally very hardy broom. However all of this material will be recycled through our shredder reducing it to wood chips which then get mixed into my compost heap.
The rhubarb suffered a lot of broken leaves in the gales so they will end up as compost.

Daffodils, tulips, crocus and other spring flowering bulbs have had their six weeks of rest after flowering so the old foliage can now be pulled off and added to the compost heap. Hellebores, Doronicums, Aconites, and Bluebells can also be tidied up, but don’t add any bluebell seedheads to the compost heap as they will survive and sprout up all over the place when you spread the compost.

Spring flowering wallflowers, pansies, Forget me not and polyanthus can also be composted.

Add all the kitchen vegetable and fruit waste and all lawn grass cutting to the heap, then turn it a couple of times to help it to breakdown. You do not need to buy special composting worms, as they are already present in the soil, so they will find your heap and multiply very quickly.

Home made garden compost will feed all your garden plants giving them strength to grow and fight off diseases.

Pests and diseases

Control of pests and diseases today is not easy as the amateur gardener no longer has access to a wide range of chemicals. We can, however select only those varieties known to be resistant to the main range of diseases, and remain vigilant so we can take action as soon as any pest appears.

Sawfly attacked my gooseberries and had to be hand picked off and disposed off. Similar action was necessary on all my brassicas after a visit by several cabbage white butterflies, and again it was the same story in my shrub border. I found a hundred caterpillars, give or take a few, munching their way through the nice young shoots of Salix britzensis. Control was very messy!!

I had pruned them down to ground level to encourage fresh new shoots for my coloured stem border, which were doing very nicely before the caterpillars arrived.

Peach leaf curl continues to affect some leaves on my peach tree despite two sprays of Dithane. I pick off any affected leaves and destroy them. You can be quite ruthless as the tree is very vigorous and will soon put on new growth.

Roses had a few greenfly on them, breeding furiously, before the gales came and shredded their food supply. I don’t see any now, but a plague of blackfly went for my new dwarf cherry tree causing the terminal shoots to curl up and die. These had to be cut off to let new shoots grow in and replace them.

At least this year I have no gooseberry mildew as I only grow resistant varieties such as Invicta.

Finish off the planting

Winter hardy cabbage and autumn cauliflowers are now ready for planting on the allotment, but will need netting to stop the pigeons eating them.

Cape gooseberries raised in the greenhouse have now been planted out in a sheltered spot against a south facing fence. They should do well as this area got a green manure crop of mustard, plus extra garden compost to increase the soil fertility. I just love this exotic fruit, and it is also a favourite of mine for a still life painting.

Courgettes and pumpkins would normally have been ready to plant out by mid June, but the gales shattered them, so it was back to the greenhouse for the survivors to see if I can revive them. When I plant them out it is always on well manured soil with extra compost forked into the planting areas. They really need very fertile soil that can hold moisture. Two courgette plants will give us more than we can ever eat and two pumpkins will give us five to eight large fruits. They store very well in the utility room for use as brilliant soups right through the winter.

Early harvests

The season has been remarkably early despite the bad winter and spring gales. Early salads are quite prolific, very tender and full of flavour. Lettuce, (now cutting the second sowing), radish, (now picking the third sowing), spring onions and baby beet are all getting harvested regularly.

Strawberry picking started in mid May and is now in full swing. It is strawberries for breakfast, lunch and tea and plenty left over for jam and freezing. Blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries are all turning colour and the two rows of saskatoons are very heavy with young berries swelling up just nicely.

This could be a good summer if there are no more climatic disasters just waiting round the corner.

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Pottering Around

 POTTERING AROUND

Writing a gardening article ten days in advance of publication has its disadvantages. After surviving a really bad winter which killed out many plants, the garden readjusted itself as good growing weather prevailed for a couple of months. Seed sowing, planting, soil preparations and weeding were all back on schedule and I even had time to test the sun lounger. Everything was going so well that it was well worthy of a good gardening article, “Perfect Weather for Gardening”

Fate had other ideas and I now know how Michael Fish felt. The day before my article appeared the gales arrived and blew half the garden away. Good job this is Dundee, as no-one took me to task on my perfect gardening weather. Trees were blown down, my hanging baskets blew off the walls, plum trees lost half their branches, and the end of my greenhouse exploded as the winds bent the structure. Courgettes and pumpkins outside to harden off got blown out of their pots, delphiniums were flattened and any plant with soft spring leaves got shredded including climbing roses, young saskatoon plants, vegetable plants in boxes, shrubs and my new cherry tree and mature peach tree.

However, our unpredictable weather then gave us two days of heatwaves followed by a massive temperature drop turning my greenhouse tomatoes blue as they now have a well ventilated end with no glass. Strawberries are all ripening but lack of warmth reduces the sweetness and softness.

I hope that when you are reading this weeks garden adventure I will be back up to date with tasks and start my pottering around with numerous pleasant wee jobs, interspersed with coffee breaks and wee seats in the baking hot sun.

The Garden

As one display ends another begins. It is now the herbaceous border that is providing the colour with a combination of bright scarlet oriental poppies and blue flag iris. The gales had no effect on them but my new cherry tree, already suffering from an attack of black fly got its leaves shriveled, as did my plum and peach trees.

Poppy seed sown in many bare areas is germinating strongly and promises to give a good display.

My climbing roses, Dublin Bay and Gertrude Jekyll lost half their leaves in the gale, but are still putting on a decent display of flowers.

Cornus (dogwood), and Salix (willow) in the coloured stemmed winter border have both put on strong growth even after I cut them back right to ground level in March.

The Allotment

Strawberry picking is now a major task with a huge crop on all varieties. Gooseberries are also hanging heavily despite a thousand sawfly caterpillars mounting an attack when they thought I wasn’t looking. Black and red currants are also laden heavily with berries, already turning colour far earlier than normal. Nets will be needed for the red currants, but not the blacks.

Thinning turnips, swedes, chard and lettuce is at the two inches apart stage, but my thinly sown beetroot won’t be thinned till I can get thinnings as a baby beetroot crop. I do not thin leeks, spring onions or radish as they are sown thinly. Parsnips have germinated perfectly this year.

Chrysanthemums, sweet peas and gladioli planted out for cut flower and display have all established well as we have had good growing weather apart from the gales.

One area intended for a June planting of pumpkins, courgettes and cape gooseberries had been sown down with a mustard green manure crop to improve the soil fertility. This is now three feet tall and beginning to flower so it will be trampled down and dug in. It is best to dig with a trench so you can bury the green stems easily. They do not regrow once buried. It is an extra task, but has a really beneficial effect on the next crop. It is very worthwhile at the beginning of the growing period for late planting crops and also at the end after harvesting an early maturing crop such as broad beans, early potatoes, peas, salads and sweet corn.

The Greenhouse

Young vegetable plants left the greenhouse to get hardened off, then promptly returned as the gales blew in. Unfortunately it was too late for my courgettes and pumpkins which got shredded and blown out of their pots. I may be able to salvage some of them with a bit of luck.

Tomatoes were growing strongly, and flowering profusely before the gales blew out the glass. Now they are a bit cold but in time they should be ok.

Grapes now need constant pruning as every young shoot gets cut back to one leaf, as I can now see the bunches on the laterals growing from each rod.

Gardening Scotland

 

I have always attended this June event at Ingliston in Edinburgh as well as the Dundee Flower Show at Camperdown Park in September. However I now take a stand at these events to promote and sell my Saskatoon plants. They are becoming very popular as I was nearly totally sold out, only bringing back one plant. We also get the chance to look around other stands. Anna could not resist a gorgeous Peonia Doreen so it will now find a favoured spot in the garden. I really liked this Arisaema sikokianum, but was told it was a bit evil looking and a wee bit too much like a triffid, so I had to settle for a new rose for my garden hose. Life can be hard at times.

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Dundee Botanical Gardens

DUNDEE BOTANICAL GARDENS

The Botanical Gardens in Dundee is a unique asset for our town. It has developed along a different route from other Botanical Gardens. While it is a fantastic place to wander through enjoying a wealth of diverse plants from all over the world, it also serves to educate children, students and scientists in ecology, biology and the environment.

It celebrates its 40^th anniversary this month, and hopes to continue for many more years, but in these times of recession and cut backs funding for the future is always an issue.

The Botanical gardens started life on a very restricted budget, but this was turned into an asset as management of the natural environment as influenced by man was kept to a minimum.

However, as a horticultural enthusiast I enjoy looking at the beauty of natural landscapes, the smell of plants, not always found in garden centres, and finding rare and unusual plants, (all with named labels) that are usually only found in horticultural training colleges or botanical gardens.

There is a massive range of plants from mature trees to rock garden plants, tropical, temperate, rain forest and desert plants.

When studying horticulture during my apprenticeship days, knowledge of plants came from books in the Kingsway Technical College library. It would have been brilliant if this garden had been available to see all these plants and learn about them in a natural environment.

History

The gardens were started in 1971 by Dundee University to meet the needs of the botany staff.

The site chosen had a gentle southern slope, good soil, and a burn with very pure water coming from Balgay Hill running from the top western corner down through the gardens. This assisted the creation of several water features. It had great potential though initially it was quite barren and needed a lot of new plantings related to local needs.

The first curator was Edward Kemp whom I recall gave a lecture at Pershore College in the late seventies about how he was establishing a natural Scottish environment at the gardens using the south facing slope. This helped to establish a mountain flora at the top slowly changing by altitude to a seaside environment at the lower end, but going through other natural plant associations as you went down the slope. It was quite fascinating.

In 1980 Les Bissett became curator and established the new visitor centre. He brought with him a fantastic knowledge of plants.

The current curator Alasdair Hood arrived in 1998 and is concerned with promoting the gardens to increase visitor numbers and the education facilities for children, schools, colleges, university students and scientists studying biology, conservation and other plant sciences.

Education even extends to the establishment of a typical allotment garden, though some work needs to be done to bring it up to City Road Allotment Garden standards.

Education

This starts with toddlers who love to explore and discover where the tea and coffee comes from and what a banana and orange tree looks like. School children can study botany, see how plants grow, spread, defend themselves and reproduce and see local wildlife around the garden.

Facilities for teachers, students and scientists studying plants and their habitats and special research projects can be arranged.

Visitor Centre

Ample car parking allows for the increasing number of visitors to the gardens. Get advice on plants, garden problems and book a guided tour of the garden at the visitor centre. The visitor centre hosts a frequently changing art exhibition of local artists (I will be holding an exhibition of recent paintings in mid October), as well as an excellent cafe and plant sales area.

Greenhouse

There are two greenhouses. One is for tropical rain forest plants and the other for plants needing a desert habitat. Here you can see tea, coffee, oranges and bananas growing, and a giant water lily.

A wee bit of garden violence is provided with a good collection of insectivorous plants that feed on insects. The honeydew has a sticky secretion on the inside of its leaves. When an insect gets bogged down and begins to struggle the leaves fold over it so it cannot escape. The pitcher plant has long funnels with slippery sides and downward pointing hairs. Insects are attracted to it seeking some sweet nectar. Unfortunately, there isn’t any, but once they go into the funnel they can’t get out and slowly weaken and fall to the bottom of the funnel where they drown in a watery fluid full of digestive enzymes.

Natural Environments

The garden has developed over the last forty years as a place to study plants from all over the world growing in their own natural environment as much as the Dundee soil and climate will allow.

The shelter of the north west slope behind the glasshouse creates a drier environment suited to herbs and Mediterranean  plants.

At the other end of the garden plants from Australia and New Zealand which also enjoy a drier climate are well represented with some excellent mature Eucalyptus species, shrubs and ground cover plants. I really appreciated finding a Hebe macrantha with large white scented flowers, a plant that we grew in the Parks Dept nursery at Camperdown, but I had never seen since.

Another area hosts plants native to the Americas with some impressive giant redwoods.

Plants native to Scotland have a special area of mountain, glen and burn, and the specimen of Camperdown elm is the strongest and healthiest I have ever seen. It does not grow very tall as it has a strong tendency to weep.

A new section to show plant evolution from mosses to flowering plants has been created in a series of dry stane dykes which meander around leaving behind planted beds showing the different stages of plant evolution. Those dykes are very impressive showing that they can be very strong as well as ornamental allowing the builder ample scope to be as creative as he/she desires. They are a fantastic piece of pure stone mason craftsmanship.

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