August Festival of Orchids

Scone Palace’s second Festival of Orchids on 4/5 August will offer the chance to enjoy stunning displays and listen to talks by experts on the art of orchid growing each day, or marvel at the skill of professional botanical artists including Alison Strachan, Katharine Ann Prentice, Janis Bain and Coral Prosser, who will be bringing their beautiful works to Scone for the first time.

Visitors can relax in the summer sunshine and enjoy Swing Music and Jazz infested tunes from Django to Latin in the company of Havana Swing who will be playing each afternoon over the festival weekend. Refreshments will be available in the Old Servants’ Hall Coffee Shop and at the Summer Presse Bar.

The festival will include displays by some of the UK’s most prestigious orchid nurseries and suppliers including Burnham Nurseries; David Stead Orchids; Deva Orchids; Laneside Alpine and Hardy Orchid Nursery; Mansell and Hatcher; Orchids by Peter White; Plested Orchids and Regal Orchids. Plants from all of these suppliers will also be available for purchase during the weekend.

The Earl of Mansfield who owns Scone Palace is a keen orchid collector, and the many beautiful orchids that adorn the Palace State Rooms are from his private collection. The exquisite collection originates from 1971, when the Earl received an orchid from his parents as a birthday gift.

By 1985 the collection had grown to 150 plants, however the Earl’s ongoing consuming passion for orchids was fuelled by the arrival of Peter Timoney, Scone Palace’s head gardener.

Their shared enthusiasm for orchids led to the construction of a purpose-built orchid house in 1991. Two years later, their endeavours were rewarded by the winning of a silver medal for their display and several 1sts for individual plants, at the World Orchid Conference in Glasgow. Since 1 January 1986, there have been orchids in flower every day at Scone Palace.

The Earl of Mansfield now has the largest private orchid collection in the country, totalling over 1,000 plants. Although the Earl’s orchid houses will not be open to the public during the festival, many of these blooms will be on display in the Palace State Rooms.

According to Peter Timoney, the festival will be a ‘must’ for orchid enthusiasts and casual horticulturists alike. “We look forward to welcoming orchid lovers and gardeners from across the UK to Scone in August,” he said. “As well as providing a spectacular and colourful show, we hope that we’ll be able to take some of the mystery out of cultivating these exquisite blooms, and encourage many more people to try their hand at growing the world’s most beautiful flowers”