Autumn walk through Chapel Wood and Cow Pond
A group of almost fifty Friends gathered in front of The Savill Garden Visitor Centre on a cold but sunny morning to go on the annual autumn walk.
Because of the warm months we have been experiencing there were very little obvious signs of autumn with any changing of the colour of the leaves being barely visible.
The Savill Garden
We began in The Savill Garden where John Anderson explained that so far the Nyssa and the Liquidambar trees were among the few to show signs of colour and in fact, many trees and in particular the Sorbus, were producing large quantities of berries this year following our warm and wet summer.
As we crossed the Casson Bridge we could see the warm pinks of the Euonymus alatus welcoming us. John explained that birches planted in open areas were particularly suffering from the changes in the climate as these were woodland trees. In addition, he explained that many of the larger trees were not doing too well whereas the smaller ones seemed able to cope.
As we approached the grove of Sassafras trees, we could see a few pale mauve autumn crocuses poking their heads above ground.
Chapel Wood
We crossed into Chapel Wood where several trees were planting during John Bond’s time as Keeper of the Gardens.
Mark Flanagan, the subsequent Keeper, added many maples and Hamamelis, with now over 800 trees in Chapel Wood, 39 of which are champion trees.
The team are now planting trees native to Mexico and the Southern United States to see how they perform under the changing climate, and there are now more than 28,000 accessions records in all the Gardens.
We stopped by the Himalayan hemlock tree, which is a particularly fast-growing tree and, at the moment, it has tiny cones covering it.
Cones of the Himalayan hemlock
John pointed out the Quercus x hispanica which he said was a tree for the future.
The University of Wisconsin recently grew elms that are resistant to the Dutch elm disease. Within Windsor Great Park, we have one of these elms, the Ulmus ‘Sapporo Autumn Gold’ in Chapel Wood, and another in Home Park. On our travels in Chapel Wood, we saw this yellow tussock caterpillar on the elm.
Yellow tussock caterpillar
Finally, we stopped at the tree which had been planted for The Friends of The Savill Garden to commemorate the Coronation of His Majesty The King, the Quercus Imbricaria which seems to be doing very well indeed.
Written by Brenda Tong, Friend of The Savill Garden
