PUBLIC PLACES
In the courtyard stands a refuelling station. “We have our own supply,” says Chris. “The tanks hold 300 litres of diesel and petrol each - the red diesel is cheap at around 60p/l, but petrol is pretty much pump prices. He breaks off to fill the TH4365 Iseki standing beside the pumps. “This is a general loader 35hp tractor we use for moving compost. It’s filled up every three or four months.”
The 110hp T6020 New Holland nearby also handles compost and deliveries to site, also hauling 9ft wide flail toppers to tackle the large fields on site.
Security is never far from Chris’s mind, given the fleet of tractors and machinery on site, including a JCB digger, shredders, utility vehicles, mowers and a host of blowers and chainsaws.
“PlantGard is fitted on the JCB,” Chris confirms, “whilst infrared NPR cameras
survey North Drive and CCTV scans the main car park. Security officers guard the seed bank overnight and rangers patrol the estate daily.”
Annual health checks are part and parcel of management policy. A visiting mobile monitoring unit checks weight, hearing, eyesight and blood pressure and operators are checked regularly for any arm or hand vibration issues.
Finishing at 11.30am on Friday, the team pick up maintenance duties before they leave. “Usually blade changes, washing down and greasing,” Chris notes, “I’ve reinforced the importance of these tasks - as all operators are responsible for their own machinery and equipment - and everything is now back on track.” They don’t escape that easily though as weekend duties stretch to spells in the nursery.
Images © speedmediaone/Eleanor Pickett
First steps
We walk from the machinery sheds and workshops to the site offices to be confronted by a shelf stacked full of giant conifer cones, pods and thorns. No ordinary examples these. The exotic, the gigantic and the bizarre.
“This is Devil’s Claw,” reveals Plant Propagation and Collections Manager Jo Wenham, picking up an alien-looking cone with woody antennae protruding from it.
These are her samples we are gazing on with awe. She cups a Monkey Puzzle tree cone in her hands – a hard, woody, spikey ball that shelters some of the rarest seeds on the planet. These monkey puzzle seeds were collected from the last remaining coastal population in Chile and can be seen as nine-year-old plants in Coates Wood in the Arboretum.
“I’m acquiring plants to grow into our living collection and these cones are my specialty - I love them,” Jo explains.
Our group follows Jo into the nursery where she stands amid young specimens springing out of pots. “Wakehurst is laid out phytogeographically,” she states. “We
116 PC August/September 2018
target areas of the world with our expeditions designed to collect seeds for growing in the nursery and adding to our living collections and storing in the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB).”
With so many plant species on the endangered list, Jo’s heartened when Kew expeditionists discover living specimens of ones thought to be extinct in the wild.
Recovering seeds from remote, inaccessible corners of the globe is part and parcel of their task, but one doubtless bringing rich rewards in job satisfaction.
“One of the most amazing collecting stories I have heard is that Wollemi pine seeds were gathered by helicopter from the Blue Ridge Mountains by a team in South Australia,” Jo tells us. “That was the only way to access this surviving outpost of trees.”
The species has lived in the region for aeons. “Fossilised leaves of this species have been found dating back to the time of the dinosaurs,” Jo notes.
Like several large estates in this corner of Sussex, Wakehurst grows a diverse selection of rhododendrons - in the Asian Heath Garden and Westwood, with its moisture retentive soils and shady aspect, is the perfect place for them, mimicking as
it does the Himalayas from where plantsmen plucked so many specimens.
“There are 110 rare and red-listed rhododendron species at Wakehurst, including ones in the azalea subgroup,” Jo continues, “and some of them are among the large, historic collection here. Specimens preserved in the gardens already may have gone extinct in the wild.”
The seven-strong nursery team is bolstered by ten volunteers, half in the seed bank. “The team begin propagating plants for seasonal display in the gardens and wild collected trees for the arboretum, but also with the aim of bringing on plants to flowering point to ensure we have the correct identification and we can harvest additional seed to store in the seed bank,” she explains.
Jo came here fourteen years ago from Golden Acres Nurseries. If she was eager to take up a new challenge where the unusual is the everyday, she certainly found it at Wakehurst.
“When you have to blowtorch the cones of Banksia from Tasmania and Ghost Pines from the USA to open cones and remove seeds and try to germinate them, you know you will always be challenged in your job.” Diversity is the name of nature’s game.
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