DAY 4: “GIVING NATURE A HOME”… LOGAN BOTANIC GARDENS

Logan Botanic Gardens (National Trust of Scotland), is a satellite of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, which I know well, as my brother Graham, now a renowned garden designer, photographer and author, was a student of Horticulture there. Logan is a short distance from the Luce Bay peninsular and the beneficiary of the mild gulf-stream micro-climate of this southern tip of the west coast. As ‘the most exotic garden in Scotland’, it showcases tender perennials, trees, shrubs and bulbs from the planet’s southern hemisphere, many of which I recognised from my visits last summer to Australia, Japan and Bali. Having lost several of my own beloved mature cordylines, palms and yuccas to the ravages of our harsh winter of 2012/13, I was amazed that the lush and opulent planting at Logan that reminded me more of the flora and fauna of Australia, Madeira and Tenerife, had survived intact.

Personal highlights were the tropical water lilies in the formal pond, the famous primeval looking Gunnera Bog, sadly without resident dinosaur, and the historic Walled Garden with its living tapestries of spectacular flowering plants collected and brought back by plant hunters from all around the globe for our education and enjoyment. Plants are of course an endless source of inspiration to the artist and below is a photo-collage of images that caught my eye for their stunning variety of colour, form and texture. 

DAY 4: “GIVING NATURE A HOME”… BEACH-COMBER WALK

Wednesday 24^th July

This morning I joined a party of holidaymakers staying on the Caravan Club site for a guided educational walk along the beach, accompanied by Paul Tarling, Warden of the nearby RSPB Salt Marsh Reserve at the Crook of Baldoon. We learnt about the culinary, medicinal, agricultural and industrial uses of seaweed, and identified several varieties such as bladderack, sugar kelp and sea lettuce. We heard about sea creatures found beneath our feet that had a symbiotic relationship, some like the naughty innocuous dog whelk that fed on others, the sad plight of the local turtles who died from consuming plastic carrier bags, mistaking them for edible jelly fish, all of which are vital to maintaining a healthy, bio-diverse environment. Much of what Paul told us I knew once but had forgotten, so it was rewarding to focus back down on the amazing stories that some of the individual animals that inhabit our seas and beaches hold, and to appreciate anew their importance to our planet.

  

The new slogan for the RSPB is ‘GIVING NATURE A HOME’, and my next visit of the day continued this theme, in that rather than revealing the threat that mankind presents to the natural world, it celebrated everything that Man can achieve when working in harmony with nature. So, my trip around LOGAN GARDENS followed my hunt for an Internet facility to update my Blog, which I eventually tracked down to a tiny room in the village of Drummore, which was the homespun Tourist Information Centre, staffed by volunteers from the local community, and sadly under threat of closure- another victim of council cuts and the biting recession.

DAY 3: A ROYAL BABY AND A FULL MOON COINCIDE

Tuesday 23^rd July

Last night I fell asleep to the cries of the curlew and a full moon that heralded the birth of the royal baby flooding the motorhome with a magical light.  I will always associate the royal birth with being in the peaceful setting of Luce Bay, which remained unchanged and oblivious to this much anticipated event. Today I got to enjoy the local beach walks in between the thundery showers, and making friends with some of the very friendly wildlife. More on this in another post!

Meet Percy the Pigeon, Daisy the Dunnock, the Starling Stewart family and Mother and Baby McRabbit…all seen from the motorhome window today…oh, and Robbie the Rat who enjoyed hoovering up the bird seed but was too quick to photograph!

DAY 2: GRETNA GREEN, KIRKCUDBRIGHT, THREAVE GARDENS AND LUCE BAY

Monday 22^nd July

Had not spotted the hen coup in the adjacent field when choosing this pitch, so alarm clock not needed as a cockerel greeted the sunrise with great enthusiasm.Breakfast in the sunshine was a leisurely treat as this Monday morning was NOT a work day (yippee!) and I was packed up and off in good time, for the next part of my JOURNEY: New England Bay, in Scotland’s unspoilt lowlands region of Dumfries and Galloway. En route I stopped at Gretna Green, just over the Scottish Border, famous for the Blacksmith’s Shop where fugitive English couples could get married quickly and in secret, and escape the legal requirement of a licence, church wedding, and parental consent. I quickly headed on as the place was crawling with tourists and highly commercialized.

Passing through Kirkcudbright, I was reminded that this was where the 1970’s cult version of ‘The Wickerman’ was filmed, which I had shown my students 3 years ago when we did our own Wickerman art installation project at Black Rock Sands.  Sadly I had just missed the annual Wickerman Music Festival at which the giant wicker sculpture is torched. 

 

Kirkcudbright's Wickerman Festival

This town (bizarrely pronounced Kir-coo-bree) was also the home of Edward Hornel who established an artist colony there around 1900.

Edward Hornel 1864 -1933. This typical painting shows the seascape around the first coastal area I am visiting

 Half way on the second leg of my journey, I stopped off at Threave Gardens (National Trust of Scotland) and took dozens of photos of the richly landscaped grounds. Highlights were the highly productive walled garden with its abundance of fruit, vegetables and flowers, the gorgeous island herbaceous flower beds, and the ranks of astilbe and gentian in the peat garden. Plenty of inspiration to take home to my own gardens at ‘Oak Bank’ here. Sadly I had to continue my Journey without visiting the adjacent Threave Castle and walking in the footsteps of ‘Archibald the Grim’, first Lord of Galloway, so called because his party trick was to invite rival clan members to dinner and then murder them by the time dessert was served! 

 My day’s travels ended at New England Bay on the South-west corner of Scotland, an unspoilt region that many, including me often miss out on the sprint up the motorway to Glasgow get to the highlands. The Caravan Club site perches prettily on the edge of Luce Bay and has a wealth of wild flowers and bird life to explore, but its main attraction for me is as an ideal base to explore several famous gardens where the exotic plants of the southern hemisphere can thrive in the mild gulf stream climate of the west coast of Scotland. My selected pitch has a sea view, with the beach a 1 minute stroll away, so Ruskin and I wasted no time in exploring the surroundings. My bird feeding station was erected and supplied with every tantalizing bird treat imaginable, to tempt the local feathered friends to come a visiting!