Altamont is a tree lover’s paradise

FOR centuries, many of the owners of estates and large gardens in this country were compulsive and competitive collectors of exotic trees. Many of these collections still survive. I have a passionate interest in trees and for somebody like me, visiting one of these collections for the first time is an exciting event.

It happened the other day when I paid my first visit to Altamont House and gardens on the banks of the River Slaney in Co Carlow. The house is no longer lived in and the gardens were left to the State in the will of the late Corona North and are now very well cared for by the Office of Public Works.

The first thing to catch my eye was a fine Brewer spruce. This tree is a rarity in the wild, being confined to two or three mountain tops on the California/Oregon border. It first arrived in Europe in 1897 and is still not commonly planted. I can’t think why, because it’s quite spectacular. My Collins Tree Guide has rather a good description: “…the many slender branches lugubriously hung with black foliage like curtains of Spanish moss”.

Robert Miller from the plant sales area overheard me admiring it and very kindly gave me a young one in a pot. Now I’m deciding on a suitable spot to plant this extraordinary tree.

I walked past a magnificent deodar on my way down to the ornamental lake. This is the Himalayan cedar and of the three true cedars found in the world it is the least common in Irish gardens. Cedar of Lebanon is more common and the most common of all is the Atlas or Atlantic cedar.

On the edge of the lake was a swamp cypress. This species belongs to an ancient group of deciduous cypresses and comes from the southern United States. It quite often grows in swamps and its roots have adapted to waterlogged conditions. In fact, it doesn’t grow in swamps from choice but has been pushed there by younger and more aggressive species. If you plant one in well-drained soil it will grow even more vigorously.

Nearby was another deciduous cypress, the unrelated dawn redwood or Metasequoia. This is a fossil species thought to be extinct for millions of years until 1941, when a few ancient specimens were found growing on a remote mountain in southern China. It became an instant celebrity and is now not uncommon in parks and larger gardens.

Altamont has, of course, several specimens of the Wellingtonia, also known as the giant redwood. You can clearly see the roosting hollows excavated in the soft bark by the native tree creepers that live in the woods of Altamont.

There are also several good specimens of the coastal redwood, which is much more unusual in Irish collections. In the wild, these are probably the tallest surviving trees in the world. And, as I wrote in a previous article, the discovery of a particularly large coastal redwood in a remote part of northern California in 2000 means they now probably hold the double title because this tree exceeds in bulk the largest giant redwood.

There are many other treasures at Altamont, including some magnificent specimens of native sessile oak. It’s a tree lover’s paradise.

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