Gardens To Visit In Spring And Summer – Westonbirt Arboretum
Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire has an extensive tree and shrub collection as well as beautifully landscaped grounds. Today the collection contains around 18,000 trees and shrubs covering some six hundred acres of Grade 1 Listed Landscape.
In the 1820s Robert Holford began planting trees on open farmland that he owned. At this point in history, having a country estate in the 'landscape' style was the height not just of fashion but also of evidence of influence and power, and Holford set out to show he was in the very top rank. The centre point of his ambition was the house – which is now Westonbirt School. Even then it cost of £200,000 – which made it one of the ten most expensive residences built in the Victorian period. Holford's plans did not let anything interfere with his vision – when his ideas of a formal garden and series of arboreta were found to be impeded by the presence of the village of Westonbirt, he simply relocated it!
This was a time of great excitement in the plant world, with plant-hunters bringing home exotic species from the farthest reaches of the British Empire and the collection contains some of the original plants brought back - like the Monterey pine on the junction of Main and Circular Drives. Sir George, son of Robert, left no heir when he died in 1926 and the estate passed to his nephew, the 4th Earl of Morley. In 1927 the mansion was sold and became a girls' school and the estate was split up. The 4th Earl died in 1951 and Westonbirt Arboretum passed to his brother.
Lack of maintenance, exacerbated as so often by the Second World War, left the Arboretum in a sorry state and in 1956 the entire woodland was handed over to the Forestry Commission, who had the huge task of making it safe for the public to enjoy. They set about an ambitious programme of mapping, cataloguing and labelling the collection, as well as replanting and creating new areas. Today the arboretum is well worth a visit, and you can always pop to the village afterwards!
Westonbirt photograph by gothick matt, used under a creative commons attribution license.