THE NATIONAL DWARF CONIFER COLLECTION
OF ENGLAND

England has long been a Mecca for gardeners and plantspeople from throughout the world. At one time English explorers traveled throughout the world collecting new plants for their homeland. These plants rapidly found their way into English gardens, creating many treasure troves throughout England.

Being mainly interested in conifers, I have looked for these plants whenever traveling in England. There are three collections that have especially caught my attention for their extensive conifer cultivar inventory. One of these collections, the National Dwarf Conifer Collection at Windsor Great Park, near the town of Windsor, is my favorite. The town of Windsor is a short drive from Heathrow Airport and a very popular tourist attraction. Tourists especially enjoy visiting Windsor Castle, an imposing structure with an impressive changing of the guard. Most of them, however, do not make it to The Great Park, which is only a short drive away from the center of town.

Purple leaf grape vine growing up a wall at Saville Garden.

Hebe collection at Saville.

Windsor Great Park belongs to the Royal Family of England. Portions of this park are open to the public: Saville Garden and Valley Garden. Saville Garden is near the visitor parking area for The Great Park and consists of a plant nursery, gift shop, cafeteria, and a meticulously maintained garden of rhododendrons, azaleas, flowering trees, and conifers. Sir Eric Saville designed this garden around a pond located near its center. Most of the garden slopes toward this pond. Half of the slope is maintained as a lawn under some large shade trees while the remainder of the slope is designed as a dense planting of rhododendrons traversed by a number of wide paths. The conifers displayed in Saville Garden are the very dwarf and rock garden forms.

Near the nursery is a display of climbing plants against a long wall. A very wide path is found along this wall and it is divided with a series of raised beds, about four feet high.

These beds are each built inside a rectangular rock wall and planted with dwarf conifers and alpine plants. At one time a fence had to be constructed around these beds to prevent pilfering of the small plants.

When I first visited this garden in 1985, a very small gift shop was the only structure in use. The new gift shop and cafeteria were added shortly afterwards, with the old gift shop being converted into a conservatory for a national plant collection from New Zealand, which was given to the Queen by that nation. The food in the cafeteria is quite good and, as is typical in English cafeterias, the sweets are exceptional. I don't generally recommend cafeteria food but anyone visiting one of the Royal Gardens really should plan on lunch there.

Valley Garden is a treasure house of specimen trees and shrubs. A long narrow valley with a grassy floor and forested slopes provides an excellent atmosphere for an afternoon's walk. Many mature conifers are found along both sides of the valley. Near the head of the valley is the heather garden, which was established in 1954. Here is the dwarf conifer collection.

Since conifers and heather are excellent companion plants, the conifers were planted to accentuate the heather. The low-growing heather forms a carpet around and under the conifers. When the heather blooms, the conifers are surrounded by low masses of varying colors.

During the 1970's, English nurseries started cutting back on conifer offerings in their catalogs. So that many of the dwarf conifers then available would not become lost to cultivation, a dwarf conifer collection was started next to the heather garden in 1977. The light, acid soil, open exposure to the elements, and the presence of conifers previously planted among the heather made this site a natural selection. The site was also a good choice aesthetically because the ground is uneven by nature, with tussocks of wild grasses, young birches, and wild heather among the cultivated heather plants.

The collection grew quite rapidly and soon spread into the heather garden itself. The conifers are planted in beds among the plants already in the garden. These beds follow the contour of the land and preserve some of the preexisting vegetation. The conifers in each bed are an assortment of colors, shapes, and sizes.

Conifer genera are mixed in the beds for a number of reasons. This is an informal area and is designed as a garden as well as a collection. Mixing the genera is also more attractive.

Sun-loving shrubs are used to provide additional contrast to the conifers. Potentilla, cytisus, barberry, and pernyettii are planted throughout the collection.

In 1982 the conifers in this garden, Saville Garden, and elsewhere in Valley Gardens, were designated The National Dwarf Conifer Collection of England. Two years later, it consisted of 1,400 named conifers and species on ten acres of ground. By 1989 the collection had grown to 1900 named conifers and species. Every year sees the addition of a number of new plants to the collection. Mr. John Bond, Keeper Of The Gardens, was a very keen collector and saw that the garden was maintained to his high standards. He was the driving force behind the creation of this garden, and his unceasing efforts to add new conifers to the collection and to weed out the poor ones created a vibrant, ever-evolving collection that can be visited time after time without becoming boring. 

Although Bond retired a few years ago, his high standards are still maintained at the garden.

I first visited the Dwarf Conifer Collection in the spring of 1985 as part of a tour during a Pine Symposium with the International Dendrology Society. The extent of this collection amazed me. The only person more enthusiastic than myself was Dick van Hocy Smith. In about four hours we each shot off about twenty rolls of film. After the IDS Acer Symposium in October, 1989, Don Howse and I visited this garden. Once again I shot over twenty rolls of film. Several beds of conifers had been added to the collection and the conifers I had seen in 1985 had put on considerable growth.

After a speaking engagement in Holland during February, 1991, I detoured through Windsor Great Park on the way home. Two more beds had been added to the collection and Mr. Bond was fretting over space for the many conifers in the nursery that must soon be planted with the rest of the collection. He was also planning to remove a number of plants that either were not performing well or that were definitely not remaining dwarf.

The list of donators to the collection is a who's who of the European conifer collecting world. Sir Harold Hillier donated many mature specimens to the garden for its initial plantings. The Blooms, Humphrey Welch, Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, J. G. Strangman, who also gave many maples, and Ronald Corley are just a few of the donors.

The beds are named for ease of reference. Main contributors to the collection and prominent names in the conifer world are used for identifying the beds: Corley Bed, Bloom Bed, Hillier Bed, Welch Bed, Dallimore Bed, Hornibrook Bed, etc.

Each cultivar or species in the collection is represented by at least two plants. Wherever possible, the conifers are planted in groups of three or rive for aesthetic purposes. It is very difficult to list the plants in this collection simply because the list is so long.

Whenever I visit this collection, I still always carry at least twenty rolls of film and I shoot it all in the gardens. As I view my latest set of slides, I always look forward to my next visit.

My most recent visit to the garden was in 2000, just before presenting a paper at the Fourth International Conifer Symposium. The collections are showing maturity and were in the process of being renovated. Some of the companion trees have grown too large for the conifer beds and a number of the dwarf conifers have proven to be not so dwarf. Fortunately the garden has sufficient staff to complete renovations where required and many of the beds were being thinned and replanted, keeping much of the original planting to maintain the structure of the mature conifer garden.

Counter Started July, 2003