HIMALAYAN HOMAGE
Magnificent trees lend such great distinction to a landscape and, thanks to five generations of the Banks family, the gardens at Hergest Croft are an incomparable treasure trove of rare specimens planted since Victorian times. “My grandfather introduced many new plants brought back from China in the early 1900s by the plant hunter Ernest Wilson,” explains Lawrence Banks who, together with his wife Elizabeth, has cared for the 70-acre garden and arboretum since 1988.
Many of these introductions have since grown into the towering rhododendrons and exotic trees that now fill the secluded woodland valleys, creating scenes that are, says Lawrence, more reminiscent of the Himalayas than the Welsh Marches. Today, the gardens host one of the country’s finest privately owned collections of rare plants. Among them, a giant weeping beech looms within a stone’s throw of the trees stand ramrod straight. At the end of the lawn stands a superb ‘Sangokaku’ that was planted in 1913 by William Hartland Banks who built the house.
