Wakehurst Place, the Sussex country estate of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will mark the 25th anniversary of the 1987 hurricane next month to highlight how the gardens were restored in the aftermath of the great storm.
Wakehurst’s botanical gardens and surrounding woodland lost more than 20,000 trees when winds of more than 75mph tore across southern England in the early hours of 16 October 1987.
Centuries old trees fell like matchsticks at the 500 acre estate at Ardingly, near Haywards Heath. It took five years to completely clear the damage.
A quarter of a century on, the anniversary will be marked with a tree planting ceremony and public lecture by Iain Parkinson, Conservation and Woodlands manager at Wakehurst Place.
Entitled Phoenix from the Ashes, the lecture will look at how an astounding re-birth has lead to Wakehurst becoming a garden of world renown and a centre for international conservation. The lecture will take place at 2pm in Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place and admission is free to garden visitors. (Tickets will be available on the day on a first come, first served basis.)
In addition a programme of guided walks to celebrate autumn is being held on Sunday October 14 from 10.30am onwards.
Some trees planted at Wakehurst in the aftermath of the hurricane are now standing up to 50ft tall and a series of new tree collections were created; new features such as the Asian Heath Garden and Iris Dell, created in areas that were devastated, have become much-loved additions to the landscape, and the estate has gone from strength to strength. This year around 200 new trees have been planted as part of ongoing work to extend Wakehurst’s collection of trees, as the estate continues to look to the future.
In addition Wakehurst has become the hub of a worldwide conservation programme through Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, which was conceived a few years after the storm.
By 2000 the UK’s native plants were conserved; by 2010, 10% of the world’s flora were safely stored at Wakehurst and around the world. Some of these seeds are now being used to plant trees in Africa and since 2010 the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership has produced and planted over 100,000 seedlings of more than 200 native tree species in Africa.
These species, which include important medicinal plants and edible fruit species, were mainly planted with communities in Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi and Mali to enrich village woodlands, forests and communal land.
The Millennium Seed Bank is also working actively with the UK Forestry Commission and Forestry Research to build a comprehensive UK national collection of tree seeds for long term storage and for use in research and the landscape.
Such collections are of great value in testing for natural pest or diseases resistance, understanding the life cycles of pests and diseases, testing the effectiveness of pest or disease control and reintroducing populations once a threat has been removed or eradicated.
Andrew Jackson, Head of Wakehurst Place, said: “The impact of the hurricane was devastating – but the ability of nature to restore and recover has been amazing. We have some trees planted after the hurricane, for example eucalyptus trees which were planted in Coates’ Wood, which are now between 45 and 50ft tall.
“Immediately after the storm, garden staff cut a hole in the debris of the fallen trees to make planting spaces – in the midst of the carnage they were already looking ahead and began building for the future.“
He added: “As we remember and celebrate all of the new opportunities arising from the great storm, it is wonderful to think that Wakehurst is helping to improve people’s lives across the world.”
A number of Wakehurst’s current team worked at the gardens back in 1987 and remember the devastation wreaked by the hurricane clearly.
David Marchant, Wakehurst’s Logistics manager, said: “Never in our lifetime did we expect to deal with anything like it. There was glass flying around from the greenhouses, trees coming down and we lost power and water, people were dumbstruck when it got light and we could see the extent of the damage.”
Gardens manager, Chris Clennett, said: “I was living at Wakehurst at the time and managed to sleep through the hurricane, but when I looked out in the morning it looked like the whole place had been flattened. When I was walking around the gardens with colleagues the next day we got lost because all our bearings and landmarks had gone.”
“When we started replanting we had big open areas of grassland – it was hard to imagine then that in 25 years time the woodland would be back, the trees are young, but there is a solid canopy.”
While thousands of trees were lost in the hurricane a 600-year-old yew tree survived. The great age and significance of the tree was only discovered last year during research on the history of the gardens at Wakehurst. The discovery was made as part of work for the estate’s Conservation Management Plans, which will shape the future of Wakehurst for hundreds of years to come.
Website: Wakehurst Place
Im age: RBG Kew
Comments