The National Trust for Scotland has returned to a Torridon garden for a second visit as part of Project Wipeout’s Community Garden Scheme to help stop the spread of one of Scotland’s most troublesome invasive plant species, Rhododendron ponticum.

And resident Mo Wrigglesworth is delighted with the work carried out in her garden to ‘chip’ the brash and replace the Rhododendron ponticum with non-invasive ornamental plants of her choice.

The charity, which for 90 years has saved, maintained and shared many of the country’s most-loved places, is working to remove invasive non-native plant species through Project Wipeout, thanks to the support of players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

The Trust has been removing Rhododendron ponticum, Japanese knotweed and American skunk cabbage at around a dozen of its sites across Scotland over the past year.

In Wester Ross, efforts have so far been concentrated on Rhododendron ponticum at its estates at Balmacara and Torridon, where the large flowering shrub is crowding out native flowers and trees.

National Trust for Scotland natural heritage adviser Rob Dewar said: “Over the past year, we’ve made great progress in clearing Rhododendron ponticum from areas of Trust land around Torridon. But plants don’t respect boundaries and they grow anywhere, so to really tackle this issue, we need the support of the local community too.

Gallery1

In May of this year, the first part of the R.ponticum clearance work took place in the garden of Torridon village resident, Mo Wrigglesworth with the work being filmed to document the progress. The film details the background of the issues surrounding R. ponticum on the estate and how the plants are managed. Many properties on the estate have R. ponticum in their gardens as ornamental plants and shelter belts. For many years they have seeded out onto surrounding land and have spread for hundreds of metres away from the villages, and up into the hillside. In time, and if remained untreated, the R. ponticum would form an impenetrable forest, crowding out most if not all native species.

In July, the Trust and contractors returned to Torridon to complete the work on eradicating R. ponticum and restoring Mo Wrigglesworth’s garden as part of Project Wipeout’s Community Garden Scheme.

Contractors set about dragging the cut plants from behind the boundary fence to a chipper. Chipping R. ponticum produces a good mulch for use elsewhere on the estate.

It was then time to conduct a follow up sweep of Mo’s garden as some of the stumps left from the first phase of treatment had begun to regenerate. These were drilled and injected with herbicide to ensure the garden remains free of R. ponticum. Further up the hillside, R. ponticum had spread from the garden into the surrounding heath, these were spot sprayed to eliminate the threat of further invasion. Finally, it was time to bring in the replacement plants, sterile cultivars of Rhododendron which are both beautiful and harmless to the environment.

Mo Wrigglesworth is now a happy resident as she has access to her back garden, her house no longer shaded by a dense canopy of R. ponticum. Any Torridon and Inveralligin village residents interested in the plant swap programme should contact Rob Dewar rdewar@nts.org.uk

Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.