Inspired by the montane forests of California's Sierra Nevada, the "woodland garden" at Manor House was started in 1993. Although American forests were the source of our interest, we don't concentrate exclusively on the west. We also have a substantial area of woodland planted with UK native trees, as well as other garden areas with Asian and South American trees. A lot of the trees planted then were received as wedding presents, and are now becoming well established, though obviously not yet very big.
Most (eventually all, we hope) of our trees are documented, and this is being made available on the web. Few people will have any great interest in the specific plants in our collection, so for your interest (and our own :-) each page about a tree species is mostly about that species in general, and can be used as a "field guide" to help you to identify that tree in another garden or in the wild, or maybe to help you choose trees for your own garden.
There is a complete index to the woody species we have on the property, and also an index to the Ferns. Eventually there will be a page of description for each species, and also an index and descriptions for our herbaceous plantings. Many of the latter are intended to be understory plants, and as most of trees are not yet large enough to create the sort of deep, shady, humus-enriched soil that these plants need, most are planned rather than actually planted, as yet.
The collection is divided into several areas, and the aim is that any two trees growing next to each other in the garden could be found growing next to each other in nature. The area which most closely looks like "woodland" at present is our "Euro-strip", which already contained a number of mature natives before we started additional planting. The area which has seen most work is the "American strip", which is planted with species native to the North American Pacific slope. This too has a few large UK native trees, most of which it is not intended to fell. Between these two strips is a triangular area with interior and eastern North American forest species, and a narrow strip which will become a shelter belt of European trees. These areas surround a large meadow on the west (Euro), south (shelter and E US) and east sides (W US). A few plantings on the north edge of the meadow will eventually leave it quite enclosed by trees.
Other parts of the garden (two hectares in all) are less strongly themed, but include both Asian and South American species, along with some older plantings.
Although the garden started off with a selection of trees from various
nurseries, the emphasis now is more on plants grown here from seed or
cuttings, often collected in the wild. We have an ethical collecting policy
and, since the garden is meant to represent "typical" forest, the subjects of
such collection are always common plants, not rarities. In keeping with this
philosophy, almost every plant is representative of a natural population, and
we do not use garden hybrids or cultivated varieties. The only exceptions to
this are where the "natural" plants do not grow well in our climate, in which
case we may use a hardier selection or perhaps a hybrid which is close in
appearance to the wild plant we wish to represent, but which is more likely
to survive. The only example which comes to mind is Cornus
nuttallii × florida 'Eddie's White Wonder' - the species Cornus nuttallii (which we also have) tends not to ripen its new
growth sufficiently each year for the current year's branches to survive the
winter.