Noble Assets

For tree-loving landowners who want to leave their mark, nothing beats planting your own quercetum. Mark Griffiths celebrates the mighty oak and its determined collectors

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GLANUSK is the Welsh seat of that noblest of trees, the oak. In spring and summer, the wilder parts of this glorious Powys estate are garlanded with coppery red and golden-green as our native Quercus robur and Q. petraea burst into growth.

Gracing its more frequented areas are specimens that celebrate royal visits, the oldest of which is an exotic Turkey oak (Q. cerris) planted by the Duke of Clarence in the 1880s. This tradition has flourished under Dame Shân Legge-Bourke, who inherited the estate from her father, the 3rd Baron Glanusk. It was crowned in 2012, when The Queen planted a fine example of Q. robur, Britain’s greatest tree and the tree that made Britain great.

Now, a new oak has joined this royal company: Q. rubra Magic Fire. A remarkable cultivar of a North American species, it’s distinguished by its manageable size, red twigs and leaves that resemble the Corinthian order’s acanthus motif in shape and progress in colour from chartreuse in spring to butter and honey in autumn. It was planted on July 4 this year by The Prince of Wales to mark the official opening of the Glanusk Quercetum, one of Britain’s largest collections of Quercus species and cultivars.

The quercetum owes its existence to Dame Shân’s late husband, William (‘Bill’) Legge-Bourke. He liked to collect acorn inspired artefacts until 1981, when he fell for the product of the real thing, a young oak given to him by Lord Fairhaven. Thereafter, he made time for oak hunting on the trips abroad demanded by his career in finance.

At Glanusk, he sprouted any acorns gathered on these forays and tended the results. He began to dream of creating a living museum of the world’s oaks, a landscape in which visitors would be captivated, as he had been, by the beauty, botany and ecological significance of these most exalted of trees. He took early retirement to pursue this vision.