{"id":72929,"date":"2025-07-18T15:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T15:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/72929\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T15:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T15:05:10","slug":"turning-over-a-new-leaf-historic-english-gardens-adapt-to-the-changing-climate-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/72929\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning over a new leaf: historic English gardens adapt to the changing climate | Plants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rare succulents, palm and monkey puzzle trees, beaked yucca and oriental hornbeams are just some of the new features in the historic gardens of England, as head gardeners get to grips with the changing climate this summer.<\/p>\n

In the historic Grade I-listed landscape at Sheffield Park and Garden in Sussex, designed in the 18th century by Capability Brown and Humphry Repton and famed for its rhododendrons and azaleas, the National Trust has planted a \u201cmore resilient\u201d garden. It features drought-resistant flowers and trees from South America, Australasia and the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

Where once there was just a grassy clearing, there is now a Garden for the Future full of purple and blue salvia, yellow aloes, palm and monkey puzzle trees, rare beeches and other exotic and subalpine plants.<\/p>\n

Historic English gardens are being forced by the UK\u2019s changing climate to increase the resilience and diversity of their living collections and plant displays, and the results are fascinating. Next week, for example, visitors to the Royal Botanic Gardens<\/a> in Kew, London, will get a chance to see montpellier maples, beaked yucca, rare succulents and oriental hornbeams when the Carbon Garden opens there on 25 July.<\/p>\n

Crocosmia. Photograph: urbanglimpses\/Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n

The design also invites visitors to journey from a planting of cool purple and blue herbaceous perennials towards bright red crocosmia and achillea, to illustrate the dramatic rise in global temperatures over time, inspired by climate stripes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It includes a dry garden and a rain garden, as well as wildflower meadows, grasslands and carefully selected resilient trees, such as Mediterranean cypresses and Persian ironwood.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to be more positive in our thinking about how we adapt gardens and habitats to the threat of climate change and the carbon cycle, and highlight some of the solutions \u2013 or at least the mitigations \u2013 that we can make to manage some of the impacts of climate change,\u201d said Simon Toomer, the curator of living collections at Kew.<\/p>\n

Strategies include growing more diverse and drought-resistant plants, prioritising water capture and biodiversity and using shade planting to shelter Kew\u2019s most vulnerable flora and fauna. \u201cThe Carbon Garden will give us an opportunity to do that at a concentrated level,\u201d Toomer said.<\/p>\n

The director of Wakehurst in Sussex said prairie plants had been very happy in the 30C heat. Photograph: @RBG Kew August 2022<\/p>\n

Further south, Kew is already reaping the benefits of climate-resistant planting. In Wakehurst, formerly the grounds of an Elizabethan mansion and now home to Kew\u2019s millennium seed bank, an \u201cAmerican prairie\u201d of rare grasses, black-eyed susans and mountain mint is thriving this summer.<\/p>\n

It was planted with hundreds of thousands of wild prairie seeds from North America in 2020 as an experiment. Horticulturists say as many as 85 different species \u2013 well over 40,000 plants \u2013 are now successfully established in the Sussex landscape, boosting biodiversity in the area.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, gardeners even discovered a prairie plantain \u2013 which has thick, rubbery leaves, is adapted to living in very dry conditions and can grow up to 1.5 metres (5ft) tall \u2013 flowering for the first time.<\/p>\n

It is hoped the beauty of the flowers at Wakehurst will inspire visitors to plant prairie species in their own gardens. Photograph: Jim Holden\/@RBG Kew August 2022<\/p>\n

Susan Raikes, the director of Wakehurst, said prairie plants had been \u201cvery happy\u201d in the 30C heat this summer. \u201cThe root systems of most of them extend a meter underground, so they tap into the water table below, which makes them really resilient to the kind of hot summers we\u2019re experiencing now. Their deep roots also mean they capture and store a lot of carbon in the soil.\u201d<\/p>\n

She hopes the beauty of the flowers in the summer will also inspire visitors to plant prairie species in their own gardens. \u201cSome are fabulous for pollinators. They are the sort of plants we\u2019re going to need to plant in the future in this country to protect our pollinator population.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, she warns that prairies die back in winter. \u201cIt isn\u2019t a landscape that looks beautiful all year round.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the future, historic gardens might have to separate their planting into winter gardens that could flourish in wet, cold and windy conditions and summer gardens that could survive hot, dry conditions, she said. \u201cPlants are adapting, but we\u2019re going to have to adapt as well. What we can expect from our gardens and landscapes will have to be different in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few miles away, the award-winning garden designer Joe Perkins used raised, mounded beds to address this problem when he created the Garden for the Future for the National Trust this summer, the first major change to Sheffield Park and Garden since the charity started looking after it in 1954. \u201cIt is predominantly heavy clay soil throughout the site and that poses real problems for the existing trees because it dries up and cracks in the summer, which splits apart their root system,\u201d Perkins said. \u201cAnd there\u2019s no point planting very drought-tolerant plants in heavy clay, because they\u2019re going to die in the winter, when the soil holds a lot of water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since plants that can cope with drought \u201cdon\u2019t like sitting with their feet in the water during the winter\u201d a lot of the plants in the new garden were in raised planting beds, he explained. \u201cThe soil we\u2019ve put in those beds is a mixture of recycled, finely crushed brick, soil and compost, to make it very free-draining.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historic English gardens should not be viewed as set in stone, they are a living part of our heritage and must be allowed to experiment and evolve to address the climate emergency, he argues. \u201cThey\u2019ve got to be progressive \u2013 and places like Sheffield Park were always progressive. It was always a garden of exotic plants, and it needs to be able to adapt to the conditions we are facing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newly published scientific research into the trees that have the best chance of withstanding changes to the climate at Kew in the future has been used to inform the 35 new trees that have been planted in the Carbon Garden. Kew\u2019s scientists also used cutting-edge light detection and ranging (lidar) technology to figure out which tree species are the best at capturing and storing carbon, with visitors invited to look through binoculars in the garden and view a 3D lidar model of a nearby tree.<\/p>\n

Toomer said: \u201cThere\u2019s a high likelihood that up to half of the trees at Kew will be suffering and not thriving towards the end of this century. So we\u2019re responding to that by planting different kinds of trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perkins thinks it is vital that historic gardens, working with scientists, are open to such changes. \u201cWe need to experiment, to move our gardens forward, to be more resilient for the future,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t push boundaries, we won\u2019t learn \u2013 and we need to learn fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plants that work for gardens in a droughtEryngium, commonly known as sea holly. Photograph: Geoff Smith\/Alamy<\/p>\n