In the pink – carnations are a gardener’s delight

DURING a quick dash to Spain for a family celebration, it was heartening to walk between fields that were green with cabbages, celery and spring lettuces.

Nearby, flowering almonds created a blizzard of pink blossom and trees, heavy with oranges, lined every street.

So much fruit fell during the night that every morning a street sweeping machine would pass, brushing it up before it turned into a slippy menace.

If we’d been there for more than a few days I would have made marmalade, but this was just a flying visit and all too soon it was time to return home to bare trees and grass still yellow from having been buried beneath snow.

To cheer myself up, I had a chat with Keith Mastaglio.

Keith is a carnation grower and, for the first time, he will be bringing his plants to Gardening Scotland, the national festival of gardening.

Carnations are considered by many to be exclusively hothouse flowers, but there are many fine garden carnations and, according to Keith, they couldn’t be easier to grow.

Yet despite their beauty and scent, carnations have fallen out of favour in the last decade and if it wasn’t for the efforts of Keith and his wife Gill, many classic varieties would have been lost to cultivation.

Some of the oldest carnations they grow were raised at James Douglas’ nursery close to Floors Castle in Kelso, which still has a collection of heritage varieties.

Crathes Castle on Deeside holds a National Plant Collection of Malmaison carnations, the variety favoured by Oscar Wilde as a buttonhole.

These are tricky customers and one for the experts, but growing garden variety carnations couldn’t be easier, says Keith.

“They need no looking after whatsoever. They grow to about a metre in height and if you dis-bud them they grow sprays of flowers.

“They are happy in a mixed border and some of them are very highly scented.”

At Gardening Scotland, which takes place from Friday, June 1 until Sunday, June 3 at the Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh, Keith hopes to introduce gardeners to the pleasures of growing not just carnations, but also pinks, once cottage garden favourites with a delicious clove scent and a delightful crimped edge to their petals.

Pinks start flowering in late June and will continue right through to the first frosts. Some keep going even longer.

“I have one called ‘Passion’ in a large container that, despite the snow of recent weeks, is already covered in buds,” says Keith.

If you want to see Keith’s carnations at their best, then they will be filling the Floral Hall at Gardening Scotland with colour and scent.

Tickets are on sale now at gardeningscotland.com