A world of trees in a Perthshire garden

ON a day of autumn sunshine, when Perthshire was looking spectacular, I drove up a steep hillside overlooking the Tay valley to visit a garden aflame with autumn colour.

Until she retired 10 years ago from running the farm that has been home to her and husband Donald for more than 40 years, Sally Crystal says gardening was just a chore.

Then she caught the bug and she’s been making up for lost time by planting trees and shrubs with beautiful autumnal shades.

Along the way she’s become an expert propagator and, on the kitchen table, were a bag full of seeds of Quercus faginea, the Portugese oak, sent by her son Fergus from the Mediterranean.

Fergus is a botanist and so Sally frequently gets packages from around the world, filled with the seeds of trees that you wouldn’t normally expect to find growing 550ft above sea level in the Highlands.

“What we’ve discovered is that, if you start them off from seed or get them when they are very young, many types of tree will adapt to the cold weather here and grow quite happily.”

She and Donald have just planted 100 mixed species in a new arboretum they are developing and already in her garden Sally has cork oaks, tulip trees and mulberries.

The garden sits above Aberfeldy, facing south over the Grandtully Hill to the grouse moors beyond and, despite the streams that pour off the hillsides into the Tay, Sally’s big problem is a shortage of water.

“During the Napoleonic era, French prisoners built drains all over this area, and as a result very little water reaches the garden,” she said.

“Because of that I only plant new trees in the autumn, when I know there will be rainfall, and I water them well until they have become established.”

She also mulches thickly using home-made compost.

“I don’t add onion skins, citrus peel or leeks as these can inhibit decomposition and I keep beech leaves separate from the rest of the leaf mould because they are very acidic.”

Sally’s garden spreads down the hill in handsome terraces, made from local stone.

“My mother-in-law had them built when she lived here but I thought they were too straight, so I took a course in dry stone walling and now I maintain them, adding curves to soften their lines.”

In spring the terraces are a sea of blue poppies, followed by billowing stems of nepeta.

Sally cuts this down in August so a second wave of flowers to contrast with the surrounding autumn colours.

“I tried lavender in the top terraces but it didn’t do well then a visiting plant expert suggested it was growing at too high an altitude, so I moved it to a slightly lower terrace where it now flourishes.

Small changes like this, she says, have been the key to creating a garden that is continually changing and developing but which is at its most spectacular in autumn.