Enchanted Forest – Explorers’ Garden, Perthshire

Pitlochry from the air

The Enchanted Forest is a 3 week light and sound event showing off the Explorers Woodland Garden in Pitlochry, Perthshire. The show moved this year from Faskally Wood where it had been held since 2004, having inaugurated at The Hermitage in Dunkeld in 2002.

This year the event is called, fittingly, Transitions. It had its genesis in the roots of the Perthshire Big Tree Country and has attracted a number of sponsors while garnering prestigious awards:

Beating off stiff competition from some of Scotland’s finest events, The Enchanted Forest has scooped the Event Management Grand Prix, alongside the awards for Best Cultural Event and a commendation for Best Large Event.

We went to see this light and sound show – neither of us had ever been before. The web site hype is what drove us up to Pitlochry through some of the loveliest country on offer. The River Tay runs alongside the road until Dunkeld and Inver where the River Tummel joins it. Driving north from Inver which houses the River Braan also flowing into the Tay, the Tummel is a visual treat of a river seen winding its way below the hills all the way to Pitlochry.

I really like the forested hills and the smattering of deciduous woodlands that are on the valley floor. Of course sheep and cattle are always in view. I love it. Picturesque treat in the autumn when the trees are turning.

Of course Inver is of interest to me because it is so close to Birnam where Macbeth had to understand why the wood was coming to him.

Birnam Wood in Sepia 1800

And it also has a woodworking group called Burhouse  2.0 Ltd with all manner of tools, woods and machinery. The day we went, Burhouse was hosting a wood turning clinic. Combining a trip through the Enchanted Forest with the hunter gatherer’s penchant for wood and tools was a bonus.

This is the gorgeous view down Pitlochry's main street

Pitlochry itself is a pretty town and is one of those obvious reasonably well off arts and crafts towns. It sports a charming view down its main street.   It also has the Salmon Leap seen from the Pitlochry Fish Ladder

This is the Fish Leap - it looks amazing - I have to see it.

which is built into the Pitlochry Dam and power station. It is definitely a tourist attraction. We travelled through there when I first came to Scotland and my memories of Pitlochry stood the test. It is still a beautiful little town.

The photos we took at the Explorers Woodland Garden that night didn’t come out very well but here are a couple.

This is me touching the seed pod!!

There is a gallery of professional photos on the web site that are a treat and taken by proper photographers. Andy from Stravaiging would have taken excellent photographs. I will aspire to be a better photographer:-)

Of interest in the Garden are the Scots plant explorers who travelled far and wide finding plants. It could be a risky business in countries that hadn’t seen white men. My all time favourite is Robert Fortune.

I am a fervent tea drinker and when I came across a book called For all the Tea in China by Sarah Rose, I just had to have it. I couldn’t put the book down!

Fortune collected a lot more than tea from China; he brought back the Buddleja among other species. He had to disguise himself on occasion because of the hostility westerners could experience in China and elsewhere. His achievement though, was being able to finally (after years of disappointment and plant deaths) bring living tea plants back to India thus laying the foundations for the Indian tea trade. He also risked life and limb to extract the secret of preparing and making tea from the Chinese. He was intrepid. I owe him because I always need tea!!

He wasn’t the only plant hunter from Scotland of course. There was David Douglas who brought back the Douglas-fir from Canada. Then there was George Forrest who also travelled to China and Yunnan. He brought back the Rhododendrons and Primulas among hundreds of other species.

Francis Masson introduced Strelitzia and the Trilliums. One of my neighbours is fascinated by the trillium family. Thomas Drummond came back with the Acers and Phlox. William Forsyth had the Forsythias named after him.

These are a few of the names to be found on the Explorers Woodland Garden website. It is worth a visit. We plant and tea aficionados owe these explorers more than we can really appreciate.

Lights at Faskally

The Hermitage is a place I will visit soon. It sits on the River Braan and has a heritage Douglas fir, supposedly 200 feet high. The photos of the attractions look stunning. And it just over the road from Inver. Dunkeld here we come!!

Stone Steps at the Hermitage

What a walk!

Future Food Security

The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”.

World Health Org. logo

So we aren’t there yet. I seriously doubt that anyone would claim that we have overcome the food supply issues that currently face the world.

Syngenta is the product of a merger in 2000 of Novartis and AstraZeneca, themselves having formed from earlier companies, stretching all the way back to Geigy in 1758. It’s quite a pedigree.

Market prices for veges

Anyway, the point is not to talk about Syngenta as such, but that of global agribusiness in general and the burgeoning of companies funding genetic modification, research and  the development of drought resistant, nutrient enhanced staple foods for farming in marginal areas.

I was listening to a Radio National programme on the ABC with regard to Australia’s role in all this. Now Australia exports over half of its agricultural produce (65%) and imports on a seasonal basis. Distribution costs add to the price to the end user of imported foodstuffs.

To maintain those levels in alternatively drying and flooding growing areas means smarter farming. There have been some silly experiments in Australia with regard to rice and cotton farming that have depleted natural resources and are a blight on Australia’s agricultural page.

However, it is not the only country having done stupid things that produce dustbowls and rivers with diminished flow. It is a global phenomenon born of ignorance about how to adapt best

Vertical Garden Melbourne

growing practice to the local place in which such growing is practised.

Desertification is driven by the imbalance between human demand and the supply of benefits by natural systems. Population growth, inappropriate policies, and some aspects of globalisation drive unsustainable pressure on dry lands. Occupying over 40 per cent of the world’s land area, dry lands are home to over two billion people. Half of all people living in poverty are in dry lands. The low water availability in dry lands today drives many of the challenges. The current average annual capacity at 1300 cubic metres per person is already well below the minimum threshold of 2000. United Nations Uni

Desertification in Australia

So what to do? As the global population burgeons, there are mouths to feed. I keep coming back to the definition of food security. I would rather include the ever growing global population and find ways to reduce that. And everything seems to come back to education and the empowering of women in the regulation of their reproduction cycles.

Education based on reality which means teaching science not belief in superstitions; we have enough of that already and it appears we have a propensity to imbibe more.

There are those who say the whole food security debate is a furphy designed to further vested interests. I don’t agree. Food security is a massive problem for governments and they are very aware of this. And it isn’t just poorer countries.

There are those who say that growing more food will not necessarily reduce the unequal distribution of food at all. I think it can change.

Imagine plenty of food

I agree that corporate profits push food prices higher while ensuring that excess food production unaffordable by poorer countries is wasted by dumping. Not to mention the food that is wasted in food rich countries by consumers. Not to mention the stored food that is consumed by other animals while in storage. India apparently loses well over 40% of stored grain to rats and mice.

Future food security is still an ideal, the reality of which is being researched by plant pathologists, such as Pam Ronald as well as the Syngenta type companies in the world.

Rice harvest Phillipines

Rice paddy prep.

When I hear the nay-sayers pontificating about the ‘evils’ of GM foodstuffs, none of which stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever, and then look at the number of people starving to death every day, I have to admit that my ire gets up.

I came across one Dr.Oz, a wooer of some note, mentioned by Ronald on her blog and was incensed enough to write a very vitriolic email to the said ‘doctor’. He’s an anti-vaxer as well. I will come across him and his ilk again and they will all get the back of my tongue in no small measure.

Apart from the stupidity of emotional arguments based on nothing (sounds like religion to me), none of these wooers have any practical proposal to feeding our growing population. We have to keep those already alive fed and clothed, let alone the ones that keep coming onto the planet.

Barley fodder for animals

So for me, I would far rather put my energy into the Pam Ronalds of the world and not whinge when Syngenta makes a profit. So long as knowledge keeps accruing and we get closer to keep our species alive without too drastic an effect on the world as we know it, we need to embrace the science that will help us all achieve future food security.

Visiting Falkland Palace

Visually attractive, Falkland is a quaint little town with an impressive history. Its most famous building is the Falkland Palace

The Palace seen from the street

now part of the National Trust for Scotland.

Village Square framed by East Lomond

The monument in the middle of the village square looking up towards East Lomond is very ornate. The water was not flowing the day I went there. There used to be a lovely café where I had my first haggis and neeps but it has since closed and is now a pharmacy!!

The MacDuffs owned the castle in the 12^th century. But it is really King James IV who completed the castle proper and James V who made some remarkable additions.

The world’s very first tennis court was built in Falkland Palace in 1539. I hadn’t noticed the building when I was wandering around the ponds until a doorway caught my eye. Quite a small doorway and so I went through. What a terrific surprise it was.

Royal tennis court built 1539

It was James V who commissioned it – he who was the father of the tragic Mary Queen of Scots.

The room I walked into was as long as the court with benches presumably for spectators. The court is walled but open to the sky. On the table/desk is this synopsis under laminated protection:

Falkland Royal Tennis Court, the oldest in the world, dates from 1539. It was part of James V’s transformation of Falkland Palace into the finest Renaissance building in Britain. Tennis was probably introduced to Scotland in the 13th Century and is named from the French tenez. After lawn tennis came in the 1870s, this was distinguished as ‘royal tennis’ in Falkland.

On a warm, sunny day!

The Palace is managed by the National Trust for Scotland and the gardens and ponds are quite lovely.

One of the two ponds outside tennis court building

The Palace itself is superb especially the Ruins.

Palace ruins looking good!

The whole town is delightful and the church grounds beside the Falkland Palace houses a statue with the best first name I have ever seen, anywhere.

Onesiphorus Tyndall-Bruce was a barrister originally from Bristol and lived from 1790 to 1855. He was entitled to add Bruce to his name on his marriage to Margaret Bruce, a Falkland heiress.

Isn’t Onesiphorus just the best? And here he is:

Onesiphorus

There is an inspiring sense of history about Falkland and, of course, that is what I absolutely love. This country Scotland is full of it!!!!

The Glen in Dunfermline

Carnegie looking down the High Street

Dunfermline, for me, will always evoke the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens with the king (who was Alexander III) drinking the blude-red wine. I hadn’t realised that it was also the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie until I visited the town in May 2009.

There is a beautiful park in Dunfermline named Pittencrieff Park. It’s known locally as The Glen and was originally part of the estate and grounds of the Lairds of Pittencrieff.

Andrew Carnegie bought the grounds’ 76 acres in 1902 and gave it in trust to the townspeople of Dunfermline. It has been developed for the public and includes landscaped areas with nature walks, ponds and statues. It is simply a gorgeous place to walk through, visit its ruins, museum and locate its six entrances.

Black Tulips! The first I had seen.

The Pittencrieff Street entrance to The Glen had black tulips in the garden beds that looked amazing.

The first time I went to Dunfermline was in May and the cherry blossom was stunning.

Cherry Blossom at The Glen

The entrance at the bottom of the High Street is where the statue of Andrew Carnegie stands and looking back down into Dunfermline from his statue shows the ancient quaintness of an old town. It is a bustling centre now but the history is apparent.

Looking into High Street from Carnegie's Statue

Imposing Abbey Ruins

The Abbey ruins are very imposing. I didn’t get to wander around inside but I most certainly want to, so there will be an update to this post. This photograph shows it in its entirety.Close up the walls are pitted and gouged. It is quite magnificent.

Scotland is full of statues and old ruined abbeys, palaces and cottages. I must say that the statues always grab my attention and that of my camera. I know there are other places but Scotland is one big visual treat. Its parks and gardens stand out and almost compete with each other for top marks. The Glen comes close to taking the cake!

The Plaque under Carnegie's Statue

Town Park in Glenrothes

The cygnets have hatched!! Only one survived.

I noticed the swans‘ nest the first time I visited the park. That was 2008. The gardens were flourishing, it was summer.

Tulips and Gentians in Spring

All manner of birds were swooping around and I fell for this Park so close to my home.

One offspring to carry the name!

Just beautiful and here are some photographs of that time. Aren’t the begonias something else?

Begonias showing off!

The past couple of years have seen my clicking the camera and recording spring, summer and autumn plantings. Fife Council does a fantastic job at keeping the public gardens a visual treat for the rest of us.

See me, see me! I am here

Last year the swans lost their chick to fishing lines that people (it’s always people isn’t it?) left in the pond where the Leven River is diverted over a spillway through the park.

This year, Council brought in the heavies – they are dredging the pond for the first time of deposited silt, cans, plastic and fishing lines(!), rotten food (algae is a problem) and other assorted detritus.

The Dredge clearing up muck

It looks pretty dire now but will be cleaned up and prettified again in a month or so.

The swans came back yesterday. They didn’t hatch a chick this year and they aren’t too fussed with what is going on. They look a little forlorn because there’s no water and a ruddy big machine making noise in their habitat.

Look what They've Done to our Home, Ma

But they will stay; it is their pond, after all!!

So this time next year, the Park will be as beautiful as ever – and clean!!

And the Leven still flows!

Leven River flowing into the Park