Notes on...Leaf-peeping in Gloucestershire

Don’t delay — this is the year to visit the National Arboretum. Thanks to the long hours of sunlight we had this summer, followed by the cooler and shorter days of recent weeks, this autumn is going to be one to remember. Fruit, hops, hips and nuts hang heavy on the bough, but there is still much to look forward to.

Reserves of the green pigment chlorophyll in our deciduous trees and shrubs have been exhausted, allowing the hidden yellow pigments of xanthophyll and the orange of betacarotene to come to the fore. Although always present in the leaves, they are masked by the overriding green of the chlorophyll which is needed during the food producing months of summer, allowing plants to create reserves for winter. Last year was a washout, and who knows what will happen next, so book that train or fill up the tank and visit Westonbirt — the country’s greatest and most varied collection of trees that cover an astonishing 240 hectares (600 acres) of Gloucestershire.

Westonbirt began its life as the private passion of the Victorian industrialist Robert Staynor Holford in the 1850s and was further developed by his son, George Lindsay. They hitched their heavy wagon of cash to the zeitgeist of the time; the passion for plant-collecting from all corners of the globe, which gave rise to this fabulous collection of rare and important trees. Long avenues or ‘rides’ were planted in such a way as to radiate out from the main house like the boulevards from the Arc du Triomphe, leading the eye or the horse towards the focal points of particularly cherished specimens.

The planting, which owes much to the principles of William Sawrey Gilpin, was not done according to geographical provenance, as a more modern botanical garden might be, so you find stout cedars of Lebanon rubbing shoulders with dawn redwoods from America, oak with pine, and parrotia with lime. In the wilder Silk Wood, there are Japanese maples (Acer palmatum) and they are at the zenith of their autumnal brilliance right now. The Cercidyphyllum japonicum gives off the surprising scent of candy floss.

Westonbirt is home to 130 ‘champion trees’; the biggest or best specimens of their genera in the country, and the calendar is filled with tree festivals, cleverly lit nighttime walks, concerts and demonstrations. So, for all you ‘leaf-peepers’ (that’s honestly the technical term) large and small, if you can’t make it to the momji-gori (‘maple viewing’) in Kyoto, the Ruska (‘russeting’) in Finland or to see Fall in Vermont, be grateful to the visionary Holford family and make your way quickly to Gloucestershire. Only a few more weeks to go before the winter fog rolls in.