Journal

The magical machair

Over the past couple of weeks I have been touring the Outer Hebrides - a chain of islands off the West coast of Scotland - camping in some of the most amazing places along the way.

I had expected the Hebrides to be stunning - we have all seen those amazing photos of deserted white beaches with a turquoise sea - but I hadn't expected the flowers to be quite so mind-blowingly beautiful.

We visited when the machair - the flowery plains that cover much of the Hebrides - were in full bloom.

The low fertility means that plants that would tower over me in my own garden are knee height here - but without the flowers being diminished in size.

At the same time pink clover - which visually holds together so many of the meadows, both those on sand and those on saturated peat - is supersized, growing in line with angelica, knapweeds and fennel.

The constant breeze gives the machair a vibrating thrum - waving grasses or reeds blurring the colours so it appears to be a giant living tufted carpet.

I was amazed at how many different flowers made up these plains - clover, fennel, scabious, speedwell, harebells, buttercups, dorindium, knapweeds - my notes go on and on - different flowers for different aspects but all merging to completely cover islands like South Uist and Eriskay.

I am now thinking of how to take the swirling communities of plants, the interweaving colours, the pure heart soaring beauty of this and try to mimic them in my own garden - to try and get a little of that Hebridean magic every day.

But in the meantime I have hundreds of photos like these to look at.

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