A changing climate Planting seeds for survival of historic English gardens

Rare succulents, palm and monkey puzzle trees, beaked yucca and oriental hornbeams are just some of the new features in the historic gardens of England, as head gardeners get to grips with the changing climate this summer.

- Donna Ferguson

In the Grade I-listed landscape at Sheffield Park and Garden, a historic English landscape in Sussex, designed in the 18th century by Capability Brown and Humphry Repton and renowned for its rhododendrons and azaleas, the National Trust has planted a "more resilient" garden - featuring drought-resistant flowers and trees from South America, Australasia and the Mediterranean.

Where once there was just a grassy clearing, there is now a Garden for the Future full of purple and blue salvia, yellow aloes, palm and monkey puzzle trees, rare beeches and other exotic and subalpine plants.

Historic English gardens are being forced by the UK's changing climate to increase the resilience and diversity of their living collections and plant displays, and the results are fascinating. Next week, visitors to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew will get a chance to see Montpellier maples, beaked yucca, rare succulents and oriental hornbeams when a new Carbon Garden opens there on Friday.

The design also invites visitors to journey from a planting of cool purple and blue herbaceous perennials towards bright red crocosmia and achillea, to illustrate the dramatic rise in global temperatures over time.

It includes a dry garden and a rain garden, as well as wildflower meadows, grasslands and carefully selected "resilient trees", such as Mediterranean cypresses and Persian ironwood.

"We're trying to be more positive in our thinking about how we adapt gardens and habitats to the threat of climate change and the carbon cycle, and highlight some of the solutions - or at least the mitigations - that we can make to manage some of the impacts of climate change," said Simon Toomer, curator of living collections at Kew.