Many of the trees that fell crashed on to other rare and threatened species, and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh estimates that more than 700 plants were damaged during the storm, including rare rhododendrons and a treasured collection of star magnolias that came from each of the four places in the world where they still grow in the wild.
New trees at Benmore may have to be planted in more sheltered locations and the historic, non-native conifers that fell may be replaced with a more resilient native species, like sessile oaks which “were quite adept at shedding branches rather than whole trees being blown out”, Knott said.
Kew’s rescue mission: arborists head to Scotland after hundreds of trees and plants felled by Storm Éowyn Scotland’s botanic gardens suffer ‘unimaginable’ loss of rare specimens.
This week, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London is preparing to send a team of four highly skilled arborists to Scotland to help the clean-up operation, assess damaged trees and remove dangerous hanging branches and fallen trunks from Benmore and Dawyck.
But last month, battered by Storm Éowyn, hundreds of rare and historic trees in the living collection of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh were lost.
