GARDENING guru Jim McColl has admitted his dream of establishing Scotland's first national garden may have failed.
The Beechgrove Garden host, 80, has spearheaded a project to create a national garden for the people of Scotland for more than 25 years.
The project, called The Calyx, was to be along the lines of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) gardens in England, showcasing the best of Scotland's horticultural industry and creating hundreds of jobs.
But proposals to site the garden at Falkirk and in Perth both missed out on lottery millions required to make it a reality.
McColl said that although there was still potential for small individual projects, he now fears the time for a national garden "has run out".
He said: "The project is in limbo. We have a board meeting in a wee while, but I think we have missed our time."
McColl has pushed for the national garden since 1988, in the aftermath of the Glasgow Garden Festival.
McColl said: "The RHS have four gardens in England that their members can go to and be taught and educated and inspired. We've nothing like that in Scotland.
"Having spent 14 years in England I know how good the RHS is - I've been a member for about 50 years and they gave me a gold medal at one time - but they don't do anything in Scotland."
He said the millennium had presented an ideal opportunity, but the project lost on funding out "at the last hurdle" to The Falkirk Wheel.
Efforts to locate the national garden at Cherrybank, Perth, were also stymied by lack of funding.
"In the meantime, projects like our arboretum of trees, to serve the gardening public, were starting to be done by other people," he said.
"It's eroding away, The Calyx, as we saw it in the first instance. We are still there, very little money, and I'm saying to the rest of them 'let's gift what we've got to a worthy cause and just close the lid on it'.
"I think the time for Calyx has maybe run out.
"It's very sad because I know it would have been supported by people from all over Scotland.
"That's my regret. I think of the way the dice fell and it didn't happen."
Ayrshire-born McColl was speaking ahead of a BBC One Scotland documentary on Sunday, "Jim McColl at 80", celebrating his recent landmark birthday.
As one of the original Beechgrove Garden hosts, he has presented hundreds of programmes since its launch in 1978 and he was awarded an MBE in 1996.
McConnell, whose father was a gardener and grandfather tended an allotment, said: "Beechgrove has just become a fixture. I don't know how many I've made - it will be a few hundred I suppose but I've never tried to count.
"I've been asked so often 'did you ever think about doing anything else', but it was in my genes I think."
He admitted the current series of Beechgrove Garden could be his last.
He said: "I haven't made up my mind. The spirit is willing but when you get to 80 you're not as fit or active as you used to be. Certain jobs you have to get somebody else to do them.
"My enthusiasm for horticulture and gardening has not lessened at all. I'm compos mentis so far but I would certainly not want to be wandering around there a bumbling old fool."
* "Jim McColl at 80" is on BBC One Scotland, Sunday, September 27 at 5.35pm
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