Tuesday 24 September 2013

Tresco part 2: The plants

Or some of them anyway.  It would be impossible to include photos of more than a fraction of the plants,  I must have a couple of hundred photos from my one day, so these are the edited highlights. I know many people have broader interests than me, so here are some of the more fluffy plants.

Starting with the proteas, there were a surprising number still in flower.






I particularly liked this one called "Red Embers"


Just a couple of one of the best ferns. The trunk was over 2 meters tall.



There are some amazing trees in the gardens,  I overheard a tour guide saying that with the storms they often loose trees as they are such shallow soil. When this happens it wipes out whole sections of the gardens. I'm pleased to say that like all good gardeners, he went on to say that while sad this means they have more space to play with and can design something new.


Getting into palms and cordylines
 

There were quite a few cordyline indivisa planted around the gardens.  They are stunning, but SO fussy.  One day I will cave and try one, despite knowing full well I will kill it, as everyone else does.

The most common succulent in the gardens are aeoniums, in fact you will find them everywhere in the Scillys.



My favourite of the aeoniums, a. nobile.


 There were a fair few aloes as well, the most common being a. arborescens


I particularly like the fact that some have great variegated heads.


 There were a few a. plicatilis dotted around


Strangely their aloe polyphylla were not spiralling as well as many do.  I thought this may be just one plant, but it was the same with almost all of them in the gardens.  It doesn't stop them being great plants though.


Aloe barberae on the left was getting to a decent size, as was the A. speciosa on the right


Then the agaves, I wont bother naming them all, just enjoy the pure sceptical these plants create.
 




I liked this variegated americana.


I am guessing this a. filifera is about to flower, the central leaves are getting smaller and the core is starting to swell.


A nice a. Nigra, they do look good when they get to this size.


A few a. parryi poking out from between the other plants.


This a. salmiana has to be one of the show stopper plants in the gardens. 


Some of the larger agaves were on the edge of paths, and had been carefully trimmed to remove any spines which may cause injury.  Even without the terminal spines the marginal teeth are something special.


So a small selection of the plants.  Nothing too unusual, but then these are planted out all year and it is the UK after all.

2 comments:

  1. *sigh*...so beautiful. I'm going back to look through them all again...

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    1. Thank you. I have just discovered that if you click on a photo it enlarges, you can then use left and right arrows on your keyboard to scroll through all the photos in a blog post. Nicer way to do it.

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