Garden Visits - Armadale Castle Gardens | Planting inspiration from Skye

Armadale Castle is the home of Clan Donald Lands Trust in South Skye. When we visited it was a somewhat damp summer day.

The ruined castle of Clan Donald looks across to the mainland and this formed the starting point of our walk through Armadale Castle gardens. The Gulf Stream meanders past and offers a mild climate to the Isle of Skye. Which means the lucky gardeners are able to grow a wide variety of plant species, including many tender ones.

And this gave us the opportunity to enjoy planting inspiration from the historic Armadale Castle gardens. In particular, we liked the yellow themed border with Giant Scabious (Cephalaria gigantea) and tall Elecampane (Inula), Achillea at middle height and low growing Lady’s Mantle (Alchemilla mollis) was in its early flowering stages when we saw it.

There was a good mix of plants, giving flowers from late April through to September, a range of heights that would change over the same period; and a variety of foliage colour and form. It’s the sort of planting scheme that could look a mess unless you find a link between the different plants; here the link was, if I may sound artistic for a moment, that the flowers all had the same tone of yellow as their base, although the shades of yellow were different.

We decided it was a bit too wet to explore the woodland trails as fully as we would have liked, but we did have the opportunity to see the Museum of the Isles which had some fascinating displays and educated us about the Lordship of the Isles. The Raven on the Rock memorial outside the Museum is stunning and eerily lifelike when first viewed through a mist of rain.

The playful otter as a central feature to the pond was a welcome change from the more frequently found fish or small cherub. It is in keeping with the location of the gardens, and would look out of place in an urban garden; but the concept of adding a beautiful statue as the pond’s focal point, something which has meaning for the owner of the garden, is a lovely idea.

There were quite a few different types and cultivars of hardy herbaceous Geraniums in the borders; they do well in the damp conditions being mildew resistant unlike some herbaceous perennials. A factor worth considering if you have a damp shady garden, as many of the varieties will tolerate shade. Just to be even more helpful, many herbaceous Geraniums will also be happy in dry shade or even a south facing flower border; you just need to pick the right cultivar for the aspect and conditions.

Perennial cornflowers are frequently found as blue flowering forms. They can be prone to mildew, and the flower stems have a tendency to flop whilst the flowers are still in full bloom. This can be annoying, one of the best ways to get round this is to cut the cornflowers hard back after the first flush of flowers, just as the stems are starting to flop. The cornflowers will repay you by flowering again in only a few weeks. Cutting the flowers to take into the house is another tactic to reduce the flopping tendency – and gives you pretty flowers too!

As well as planting inspiration, we came away with two new herbaceous plants, Geranium ‘hocus pocus’ with dark highly serrated foliage and mid purple flowers and Centaurea Montana ‘Jordy’ a perennial cornflower with almost black flowers, both of which we’d seen in the flower borders in Armadale Castle gardens.