WIND AND SALT

On a stormy promontory near Castle Kennedy, a man and

his gladioli fight the elements - and manage to win through

When John May, a retired Dorset nurseryman, came to south-west Scotland eight years ago to look for a place where he and his wife could grow rare and tender plants, his first priority was a sheltered garden. What he found was a high promontory close to the southern tip of the Mull of Galloway, exposed to high winds from all directions, where shrubs and trees struggle to gain anything like their normal height. Life is full of surprises.

"We rather liked this place for the views," he says, "it didn't have anything more than a small front garden then, but we bought it in 1990 as a temporary house while we still looked round. But then the farmer offered us an extra one and a half acres for a garden so we decided to stay."

The house, named Ardoch, is in the tiny farming hamlet of Damnaglaur, above the coastal villas of Drummore. Over the last five years John has carved what are essentially two gardens from the farmer's former land.

At the side of the house is a landscaped area of gravelled paths around a pond, with beds for alpines and other plants. At the back is a lawn, with a few small beds for shrubs and grasses close to the house and a broad border to separate the garden from the field beyond. Because nothing grows to a great height, this back border is not a barrier to the view over the fields to the sea, so the landscape blends with the garden John has made, an infinite extension.

Although only about a dozen miles from Castle Kennedy, and even closer to Logan Botanic Garden (see main article), the conditions here differ significantly from both. Ardoch is higher, windier, and - more surprisingly - drier, with only about 35 inches of rain a year, compared with 45 at Castle Kennedy. The factor common to all three is the warming effect of the Gulf Stream, allowing tender plants to survive most winters.

"I used to swap plants with Scottish gardeners so I knew the area," said John. "I knew Logan Gardens had palm trees and I'm not a great person for cold. It's slightly warmer than Dorset in winter and slightly cooler in summer - and the general atmosphere is moister, which helps a lot of the plants in times of drought."

Originally an aeronautical engineer, John opened a garden shop in Dorset in the 60s. "I started to grow things for the shop and gradually turned it into a nursery. Then I got interested in unusual plants and started to collect them, and that's the basis for this garden.

"I wanted to grow rhododendrons here. I'd grown and hybridised quite a few down south, and after I got here I was called in by Castle Kennedy to see if I could identify any of their hybrids. But rhododendrons don't like the wind: they're woodland shrubs and this isn't a woodland garden by any means. I've had to give up other woodland plants, such as pieris. The soil is less acid here than at Castle Kennedy because the farmer has used it for grassland for years and adjusted the acidity. But I can grow a few dwarf rhododendrons and camellias."

So John has had to moderate his enthusiasms to take account of the prevailing conditions. He has learned to live with them, and braces himself for nasty shocks. After one gale he went out to find that a fence he had recently put up had not, as he thought, blown down, but been sheared off at the base.

It is not all bad news, though. John is surprised that, despite the wind, he needs to stake far fewer of his tall flowers than he did in Dorset. This is partly because they do not grow as high and partly because, exposed to wind from the very start of their lives, they develop tougher stems.

"I was absolutely astonished when, as an experiment, I planted some gladioli that were going to come up through some artemisia forprotection. The artemisia didn't grow fast enough and the gladioli are more or less in bare soil. But they stood all summer without any staking. Put them in a suburban garden with a fence all round and they'd all fall down.

"I thought that I'd have to stick basically to shrubs and Alpines, but I've found that all the lilies I've planted have stood up and so have the Michaelmas daisies."

Ornamental grasses look good as they sway in the wind and John grows some that come from the southern hemisphere, such as Cortaderia richardii, the New Zealand pampas grass; chionochloa, which grows to six or seven feet; and one or two varieties of stipa. The evergreen laptospermum, also from Australasia, does well both here and at Kennedy, although it is hard to grow in many other parts of Britain.

John finds to his surprise that watsonia - a tender bulb from South Africa - survives the winter without being lifted, as do gladioli and gazanias. The billbergia, which originated in Brazil and normally grown here as a house plant, survives outdoors at Damnaglaur. He also does well with Myosotidium hortensia the Chatham Island forget-me-not. He collects hebes and grows 64 varieties, but not all thrive, as they do not like the salt in the air.

Five years is a short time in the life of a new garden, and John is still learning what he can and cannot do. He will find few answers in any of the standard text books, for, as he observes: "I'd say that my garden was almost unique in Britain - exposed, mild and dry."