Even in Winter, A Scottish Garden Beckons

James Duncan, a sugar refiner, took over from Patrick and must have spent a fortune on Benmore, planting 6 million trees. One, a Douglas fir, is now, at 190 feet, the tallest tree here. He imported and installed a pair of elaborate gilded gates that had been displayed at the Paris Exhibition of 1878, and he built a fernery. This was a fancy greenhouse popular among the new-money industrialists of the Victorian period, a place to house exotic and tender ferns in an age when plant exploration gripped imperial Britain with a fever.

After Duncan's bankruptcy, Benmore was purchased in 1889 by Scottish beer magnate Henry Younger. Surely the redwoods, by then 26 years old and probably well over 30 feet high, were demonstrating what might be achieved. His son, Harry George Younger, took over and added many of the conifers that today are so colossal, including western cedars and larches. He also began to plant the exotic shrubbery that was coming to Britain from all its vast dominions and beyond, including the rhododendron species from the Himalayas and China.

When Harry Younger donated the garden to the public in 1925, it became the perfect setting, horticulturally and aesthetically, for the large and rare collections of rhododendrons sent to Edinburgh from, among others, intrepid plant explorer George Forrest. Forrest risked his neck to retrieve rhododendron seeds from the Himalayas.

The gardeners, like all landowners in these parts, battle and remove the invasive ponticum rhododendron so the others may shine. The garden boasts 350 species or subspecies of rhododendron, some as huge shrubs, others as small trees reaching 30 feet. The hillside paths lead through groves of rhododendrons in bloom from late winter to June.

Here you will see forms and sizes of rhododendron rare or unknown in the mid-Atlantic region. Species such as Rhododendron barbatum and strigillosum bloom through March. The showy, large-leafed species peak in mid- to late April, Baxter said.

In May, Fortunea rhododendrons open, along with deciduous species from Japan and North America. But to see Benmore only in its spring glory would be to miss the point. Early autumn, after the Highland midges have waned and the landscape begins to color, would be a special time, I imagine.

Much of the winter months is spent by Baxter's crews clearing areas for new plant collections, removing weedy trees, clearing the essential system of drainage ditches and dealing with windblown giants. The garden has its own sawmill, where gale victims are given new life as timber for the garden's needs.

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After about an hour of hiking up woodland trails, we found ourselves in the newer parts of the garden, the Bhutanese Glade, where endangered plants from Bhutan are now growing safely on a hillside cleared for the purpose. Carrying on through twisting paths, we reached the Chilean Rainforest Glade, planted from seeds of imperiled trees, shrubs and conifers that Baxter helped collect in Chile. He pointed out the yewlike podocarpus and a holly look-alike called Desfontainea, festooned still with red tubular flowers, much like fuchsias or honeysuckles. It would be asking too much, I thought, to expect it to grow in Washington, even if our climate is warming.

Suffice to say, the conservation mission of Benmore is evident to the most casual visitor, and it elevates the place. It is young as well as old and is looking far into the future as well as the past. All this beauty has a purpose. On our descent down Benmore, we moved again into an old, established area, and Baxter pointed to a romantic ruin perched on the cliff above, like a small abbey. It is the stone shell of James Duncan's fernery. There is an active plan to restore it, he said.

Farther down, we reached another area under development, a native woodland that contains what is already a showcase for the mosses that cushion the woodland floor. Baxter said there are as many as 50 species of moss here. A cliff face, glistening from the constant moisture, holds tiny colonies of liverworts, clinging to the crevices. Mosses, so abundant here, were considered a bit of a weed, Baxter said. Now they are getting their due, though even he is hard-pressed to distinguish the species. Moss experts -- bryologists -- are waiting in the wings.

Benmore is near the mouth of the River Clyde and deceptively close to Glasgow. In less than two hours, you can be transported from modern city to another world. The effort is well worth it. "Most people who do come can't believe it," Baxter said, without swagger. Or, I imagine, exaggeration.

Adrian Higgins is the garden editor of The Post's Home section.