FAIR-WEATHER GARDENER

You can’t hold your breath waiting for the right weather to tend plants in Scotland

Fiona Armstrong shelters her green fingers from the storm

If the goose honks high, fair weather is nigh, if the goose honks low, foul weather will grow. It’s a useful little saying, but it will probably only help if you keep geese. Yes, if all else fails, let’s talk about the weather. It’s something we all have in common. And let’s face it, everyone is trying to stay warm at this time of year – even the trees. This month, I have been filming at Scotland’s most exotic garden and seeing how they protect their precious vegetation in testing northern climes. I am told that the chief enemies are wind, frost and damp. So at Logan Botanic, tropical plants are covered with wooden shelters or embalmed in straw and bubblewrap to keep them snug during the winter. It seems to work. Despite the Galloway squalls, they rarely lose one. Logan sits on the far southwestern tip of the country. It is half a mile from the sea and has the distinction of being warmed by the Gulf Stream. So, foreign ferns and prickly palms that would never survive in other parts of Scotland are quite at home here. Banana trees flourish, as does the Chilean wine palm. And whilst we may never see fruit on the former, the latter is quite capable of producing a nice bottle of red. Exotic specimens happily put down roots and thrive in this garden that never sleeps. In the summer, Logan is a blaze of colour for southern hemisphere trees and shrubs. In the winter, variegated cacti and pink South African sunbird-pollinated flowers vie for attention in warmed greenhouses. The heat is probably a luxury for many of these offerings.

I am told by curator Richard Baines that it rarely snows in this part of t he world. Temperatures on this small strip of land can be several degrees higher than in other neighbouring inland areas.

Richard is a fascinating chap. He lives and breathes gardens. Not content with overseeing the exotic at his workplace, he also has ten acres to care for at home. His pride and joy there are his monkey puzzle trees, which were planted twenty years ago and are doing very nicely, thank you.

Richard is a sort of plantsman’s Crocodile Dundee – I am sure he won’t mind me calling him that – and he is very good on television. His mission is to enthuse others with his horticultural passion, telling of trips to places like South America and Vietnam to find rare species of flora, which may eventually find a home in Scotland.

I am inspired by the greenery and galvanised to tackle my own uninteresting plot of land (when the temperature warms up, of course). Who knows, in a second life I may even come back as a gardener (on a nice day, naturally).

Oscar Wilde maintained that talking about the weather was the last refuge of the unimaginative. The thing is, like the MacNaughties, you never quite know what it’s going to do.

Walking with the chief and the dogs, we set off on a calm day, under a watery January sun. We return in a veritable washing machine of spray and wind – it’s a battle. However, as someone once noted: there is no such thing as bad weather, only soft people.

I am really not expecting to see an improvement in the climate any time soon. Only this week, I trip and break the small mirror I am carrying in my hand. And as everyone knows: when the glass falls low, prepare for a blow.

‘In a second life I may even come back as a gardener (on a nice day, naturally)’