BACK in August, I visited a secret plant nursery—so secret, indeed, that even the people who acquire its plants do not know where it is based. It belongs to the National Trust and lies somewhere in the West Country. Its purpose is to rescue and propagate the hundreds of rare plants that exist in Trust gardens.
Why is this important? Sometime in the 1970s, it dawned on the Trust that its portfolio of gardens contains the largest number of different plants in the world. Many are rare, some are of historic importance and more
