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Favourite oak tree lost in storm at RHS Rosemoor

One of the garden’s most iconic trees toppled during the high winds of Storm Darragh but the fallen tree won’t go to waste

In wind gusts up to 55mph, some of the highest recorded at RHS Rosemoor, the tree snapped just above its base, leaving behind a stump with its root system intact, and the possibility that the oak may grow again.

Sitting at the heart of the Formal Garden, the veteran English oak in Stream Field was a beautiful and much-loved focal point within the garden. When Elizabeth Banks designed the masterplan for RHS Rosemoor in the late 1980s, she centred her design around this tree and another oak, which stood at either end of the Long Border and formed the central axis of the garden.

The fallen oak tree stood at one end of the Long Borders, creating a beautiful focal point on the main vista through RHS Rosemoor

The oak brought a sense of stature to this newer part of the garden. Its age and grandeur made the Formal Garden feel much older than it is.

Jonathan Webster, Curator of RHS Rosemoor

Thought to be around 250-years old, the oak tree has seen the Rosemoor estate evolve from a fishing lodge and farmland to the garden you see today. When Rosemoor’s previous owner, Lady Anne Palmer first opened the gardens to the public, the tree provided shade and shelter on land used for grazing cows.

In more recent years, the tree has been home to a small number of lesser horseshoe bats that roosted within the tree’s hollow trunk – one of ten bat species found within the garden.

Since the 1990s the oak had been carefully monitored after showing signs of Ganoderma, a decaying tree fungus that eats away at the heartwood of a tree, eventually leaving its trunk hollow. Knowing it was vulnerable, the tree was roped off in a protection zone with wildflowers growing around its base.

Wildflower meadow grew around the base of the tree, forming a protection zone for the tree’s hollow trunk

It’s remarkable, you can now look down the old stump and see how thin it was, and you wonder how did it support that tonnage of wood.

Jonathan Webster, Curator of RHS Rosemoor

There’s life in the old oak

Curator Jonathan Webster hopes the oak will live on. As the tree was not uprooted its stump may send out new shoots creating a dense thicket of growth, rather than a tree shape, starting a new era in the life of the oak.

The loss of its trunk leaves a big empty space at RHS Rosemoor, so Jonathan Webster and the team plan to plant more oak trees nearby grown from acorns collected in the garden. Planting English oaks, a key woodland tree in Devon, will help replace the diminishing number of veteran oaks in the landscape and maintain the balance of cultivated and native trees in the garden.

There are plans to move the fallen trunk to an oak copse in RHS Rosemoor’s woodland, where it can decay naturally and support the ecosystem of the woods. Dead wood provides food and habitat for many species, including insects, mammals, fungi and lichen, and releases nutrients back into the soil as it breaks down.

As the tree was hollow there is not a huge amount of wood left. But if there is enough, the team would like to carve something from the wood, to create a lasting memory of the tree and its beauty.
 
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