Fri, November 15th, 2019

International Garden Photographer of the Year

We are hosting an exciting new exhibition of photographs from International Garden Photographer of the Year. This is a highly prestigious global competition, and this year’s overall winners have been covered by BBC News. The exhibition at Picton is devoted to photographs of oak trees, organised in conjunction with Action Oak. This initiative seeks to raise the awareness of the importance of oak trees to the national landscape and psyche, in both urban and rural environments. It was launched at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May 2018 and seeks to protect our oaks trees for future generations.

The exhibition is an outdoor installation, which is an extensive section from the competition, set against the backdrop of our woodlands and Castle. It features the winners and selected other photographs from the competition. The photographs are hugely varied in style, and are taken all over the UK, including Wales. The exhibition is part of a national tour and Picton will host it until mid February 2020.

Gardening Tip of the Week

We thought that we would introduce a new section into the blog each week focusing on a gardening or planting tip from our Head Gardener Roddy Milne. These tips will be a recommendation from him for your own garden. So to kick off the section we’d like to introduce our plant of the week. This is Berberis Thunbergii, otherwise known as ‘Golden Ring’. It is easy to grow, has purple leaves in summer, and the edges of the leaves are golden. It also has one of the best red Autumn colours and each plant can have multiple hues of reds and golds on it. It is a shrub that thrives in our local climate and can easily be pruned to the desired size. There is more information on it on the RHS website but do look for the  ‘Golden Ring’ variety.

Berberis thunbergii ‘Golden Ring’

Finally, just to remind you all that the Castle is closed next week to allow us to decorate it for our Christmas celebrations. We have now begun to prepare our decorations and I thought that you might like a sneak preview of the gigantic Christmas trees! It will be a busy time next week getting ready for the Christmas Fayre.