'Critically endangered' - Tree species in Arundel Castle's collection kept alive after storm damage

Worthing Borough Council said its Highdown Gardens team came to the rescue.

"[They] helped keep a critically endangered tree species alive in Arundel Castle’s fine collection, which was unfortunately damaged earlier this year,” a council social media post read.

“Last year when visiting the castle grounds, our gardeners and head curator Alex New walked beneath its magnificent Paulownia Kawakamii, also known as a foxglove tree, which is native to Taiwan, eastern China and Japan.

“Alex asked Martin, the castle’s head gardener, if they had ever managed to propagate the impressive plant, to which he said they had sadly had no such luck.

“The castle’s gardeners kindly allowed Alex to take some seeds back to Highdown, which hosts a stunning collection of plants from Asia in its beloved chalk gardens.”

‘Fast forward a year’, the team had ‘managed to grow a decent number of young plants’ from the seeds in its greenhouses. The council said they were ‘vastly improved’, thanks to the ‘generous support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund’.

The council added: “While recently on the phone to the Arundel Castle team, we were informed that its wonderful foxglove tree had sadly blown over during a storm earlier this year, so you can imagine how pleased they were to hear that we had managed to get the seeds to germinate.

“Members of the Highdown team visited the castle last week to share some of our saplings so that the medieval castle can keep this amazing tree in its collection.”

The council said it is also looking forward to adding the tree’s saplings to its gardens ‘in the near future’.