Why not be different?

When I retired we bought a wooden bungalow in Oban, 40ft above the road. The garden is on a 45 degree slope and is definitely not the place for herbaceous borders or bedding schemes! 

I decided to continue what the previous owners had done and plant shrubs. I cut a narrow path along the slope so as to have some access, however slight, to the length of the slope.

Most of what was there was the usual stuff - dwarf rhododendrons, evergreen azaleas, a cotoneaster, several hazels, some laurels, a quince and various other rather boring things! I'm trying to plant less common shrubs, the sort of things generally unavailable in garden centres, just for the fun of it. There are so many wonderful plants available, many of them hardy and easily grown, but only available from specialists or enthusiastic amateurs. 

Today's Blip is of a plant that I originally obtained from a private garden in Argyll, rooting cuttings which eventually grew into a sizeable tree. These were the biggest cuttings I have ever taken - they were two feet long and I had to make a special propagator! This is a group of seedlings grown from my original which is at Arduaine. I have Blipped it before, both at Arduaine and while I was planting it here, but this is in its final home!

It's a shrub from various parts of East Asia - the parent from which these are descended was collected as seed by Sir Peter Hutchison and Peter Cox in 1965. I've always known it as Schefflera impressa, but the name has been changed for reasons I don't understand to S. rhododendrifolia.