The Pinetum, Bicton Park

[puddleshark]

Stopped off at Bicton Park Botanical Gardens on my drive down to Exmouth at the weekend, and although the sky was full of featureless white cloud, and the light really horrible for photography, had a fabulous time wandering round the gardens. There are a few pretty flower beds in the Italian Garden and the Rose Garden, but Bicton is not really a flower garden. It's a place to visit if you love conifers, or strange things growing in glasshouses.



Took the winding path through the Pinetum, occasionally crossing over the railway lines of the miniature train that makes a circuit of this side of the gardens.


And whenever I met the train, I had to stop taking pictures, and stand and wave at any tiny child riding in the carriages, because this is traditional with miniature railways.


Dawn Redwood, I think.

A few of the conifers I recognised from visits to other gardens - Dawn Redwood, Western Red Cedar, Cryptomeria japonica - but most of the species were completely new to me.




Araucaria araucana - that one's nice and easy.








Long-haired Mexican Weeping Pine (Pinus patula). The length of the needles!

Comments

[heleninwales]

What an amazing collection of conifers! We have a lot of conifers locally, many square miles of them, but they're just the commercial species and very little variety.

[puddleshark]

It used to be like that here too, where the Forestry Commission had created conifer plantations on what used to be the Dorset heathland. Miles and miles of darkness and silence, and no landmarks. But these days, once they have clear-felled an area, they leave it to revert to heath for a few years, so these days there is a nice patchwork landscape of conifers and open heath.

[heleninwales]

That sounds good. There are areas here that have been clear-felled and just left to do their own thing. Unfortunately in many places that mean that there are lots of baby conifers, but the broadleaves are fighting back, so the areas of new forest should be more mixed.