Nursery climb

By mid-morning the temperature had soared to 0ºC so, fully charged on a bowl of porridge with ginger (as recommended by @BikerBabe), I cycled into town for some more Christmas present shopping and research.  I said a brief hello at Tribe Tattoo, then pottered out to the canal to visit the new, improved Biketrax, who apparently have a cafe and everything now, but Luke is a gravel biking guy and doesn't do folding bikes.  Then I headed out to Corstorphine to visit Hart's Cyclery; I've never been there before either, although I've met the force-of-nature that is Graeme Hart a few times.  Then it was back into town to check out the new cycle lanes along past St Mary's Cathedral and to look at the Christmas funfairs and things before visiting Mum and Dad for tea.

On the way back in along the A8 a bit past the zoo, I remembered about a gate in the wall, between Beechmount (hospital) and Beechwood (House), with steep woodland beyond.  When I was working in Corstorphine for a year or so, I often said to myself that one lunchtime I really must go and explore it.  But I never had the right shoes with me.  I'd looked on the old maps of course, so I had a vague idea.  This time I decided to jolly well see what was there.

And actually, there is quite a bit to see: it was once Beechhill Nursery – an orchard – and all the footings of the greenhouses still stand, which you can see in my photo, along with a flight of well worn stone steps and some pieces of large drain pipes.  But once upon a time:

"I beg to intimate that my splendid Collection...IS NOW IN FULL BLOOM IN THOUSANDS.  For beauty of form and novelty of colour they are not surpassed."

According to The Gardeners' Chronicle of 1891, John Downie, who started out sometime around 1880, cultivated quite a range of plants: Calceolarias, Cinerarias, Begonias, Chrysanthemums ("all the finest and newest varieties", of course), fruit trees "carefully selected to suit the climate of Scotland", grape vines, strawberries, and various stove and greenhouse plants.  Downie was based at 144 Princes Street ("near the Caledonian Station") and had quite the business going.  In 1901 he established, somewhat by necessity another nursery, in the nearby Belgrave Park at which, the Journal of Horticulture tells me, he grew "Comet, Red Currant, Victoria, Boskoop Giant Black Currant; May Duke, Langley Gage, and Beauty Gooseberries; Apples, Allington Pippin, Bowhill Pippin, James Grieve, Charles Ross", along with several thousand Roses, and a general stock of trees and shrubs "too numerous in variety to mention by name".

The Belgrave Park Nursery disappeared by the 1930s and was taken over for housing – the streets of Corstorphine Hill Crescent and Avenue lie across it.  Beechhill Nursery soldiered on though, through to about the 1960s as far as I can tell.