Shortly after Arduaine Garden was acquired in 1992, we set about the task of mapping the site and allocating numbers to beds and other areas to facilitate plant cataloguing. With the help of colleagues and other experts, any necessary identification has been largely completed and the plant collection is now held on a computer database. All plant material coming into the garden is similarly recorded.
Rhododendron species form the most important part of the Arduaine collection, this having been so since the beginning. Associated shrubs and trees such as rhododendron hybrids, azaleas, (which are all rhododendrons in fact) magnolias, camellias and pieris, along with favourite perennials including primulas and meconopsis, help to complete the spring picture so well-known to garden visitors to the moister west side of Britain - this is only part of the story, however.
Many gardens which are so decorative in the spring fail to carry the early displays on into the summer and autumn, but at Arduaine our perennial collection is designed to take the flowering season up to the frost, or even beyond. Water plants in our many ponds also add to the season-long interest and more recently we have been increasing and improving the number and variety of ferns, including tree ferns.
The garden has always contained a number of wonderful South American shrubs and trees and these have been used as the basis for a much enhanced collection of plants of all sorts from that continent, particularly from Chile.
Although we don't consider that Arduaine should be an 'exotic' garden in the usual sense of the word, we do grow, or experiment with, many unusual, rare or otherwise interesting members of the vegetable kingdom.
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