Thursday, July 10, 2008

consider the weather

"In the twentieth century some landscape gardens were altered or truncated by later developments, such as golf courses or bypasses, but, in the the latter half of the century, the weather also affected them adversely.

The look of many eighteenth-century landscape gardens was sensationally and disastrously altered first by the loss of elms in the late 1960s to Dutch elm disease, which destroyed, for example, avenues at Blenheim planted by Henry Wise. Then there was the dramatic Great Storm of 16-17 October 1987, as a result of which 15 million trees were felled or shattered, in a line east from Hampshire to Norfolk. The trees were still in leaf, which made the toll much heavier tan it would have been otherwise. Many of the losses turned out to be over-mature trees, especially beeches, planted by 'improvers' in the eighteenth century. The effects of the storm of 25 January 1990 were more widespread, since the area affected included Wales and the Midlands as well as the west and south of England, but since it happened in the winter it succeed in bringing down only (only?) 3 million trees."
-The English Garden by Ursula Buchan

pictures from the 1987 storm