Agnes Stevenson: A Zoom with a view? Flower shows get the virtual treatment

It’s great news that garden centres are open again, but while they were closed, the world of gardening has changed.

Faced with having no visitors, many organisations, including the Chelsea Flower Show, have found new and interactive ways of reaching out to gardeners.

Closer to home virtual tours are now available online of many of the gardens that would normally be open for charity as part of Scotland’s Gardens Scheme while Discover Scottish Gardens, the organisation that represents more than 400 gardens, nurseries and garden centres, is about to launch its first virtual Summer Garden Festival.

This will be a chance to go behind the scenes at some of the best gardens in the country and to learn from experts about the techniques they use to keep plants and gardens in good health.

From practical workshops to inspirational advice, there will be a wide range of activities taking place through discoverscottishgardens.org

The Festival runs for two months from next Saturday, and some of the highlights that I’m particularly looking forward to are owner Zara Gordon-Lennox’s video from the cutting garden at Gordon Castle in Moray, which will be available on Saturday, August 15.

Head gardener, Des Cotton, will share some of the tricks of the trade he uses to care for the fruit trees – and much more – at Glamis Castle

Before that, on July 4, Des Cotton, head gardener at Glamis Castle in Angus will be offering a workshop on summer pruning fruit trees and providing details on how to set up a micro-irrigation scheme at home in order to take the hard work out of watering pots and borders.

And former Beechgrove presenter, Lesley Watson, will be looking back at New Hopetoun Garden’s annual Art In The Garden event and offering ideas on how best to introduce artworks into their gardens.

More of us are recording our gardening efforts these days and sharing them with friends. Every week in lockdown I’ve been picking a bunch of whatever’s flowering and posting it online and the feedback has been astonishing.

Which is incredible, considering that I dropped my phone during the first week of being confined to home and bits have been falling off ever since, so my photographs haven’t exactly been scintillating.

I’ve also been taking before-and-after shots of the borders that I’m filling with plants and I’ll carry on recording these once a week throughout the season so that, next winter, I’ll have a record of what has and hasn’t worked and be able to move things around accordingly.

After trying to tone down the bright colour in my borders I’ve embraced it, adding this year’s star tulips, ‘Orange Cassini’ and purple ‘Ronaldo’, which although only leaves now, will add vibrant tones when they reappear next spring.