Creating and maintaining a productive garden at 1500ft in the Perthshire Highlands is a major challenge albeit a very rewarding one.
The extremes of the weather ,soil conditions and temperature at this height combine to limit the length of the productive growing season . The garden consists at the moment of ornamental planting inside the policy fencing ,
This was originally a drainage ditch which was scooped out by a friendly digger driver then flat stones from the river were laid like steps on the bottom .The sides were then built up with more stone to retain the soil in the bed.
The border itself had to be pick axed to remove the biggest of the boulders and then soil scavenged from far and wide to infill before any planting could be done !
The rowan tree in the background here is one of the few original trees to be found in the garden .Rowans , birches and conifers enjoy the conditions here though tend to grow more slowly than they would down country .This bed was made in the same way as above with the drystone wall built to retain the soil .
We try to produce as much of our own veg as we possibly can to feed the family ,share with guests and supplement the animal feeds. This patch has a 5ft fence around it to avoid sharing the harvest with the local population of hinds !
Planting out generally does not happen until the end of May and a lot of the plants are raised as plug plants from seed in the poly tunnel to give them the best chance of maturing before the Winter frosts set in .
This is a tumbledown sheep fank on the other side of the river from the Lodge where my lovely husband repaired the walls and built these raised beds ! We have used them for tatties (as they take up so much room) and as extra planting space for brassicas.
This year we plan to try some fruit here but will need to heavily manure these beds and try to figure out how to efficiently irrigate it.
