The Arboretum Trust

Kew at Castle Howard

The Collection in Ray Wood

This 40-acre area of woodland had been clear-felled and reforested with hardwoods in 1948, but was first surveyed in 1563 and much of the extant ground flora is characteristic of secondary ancient woodland.

In the first decades of the eighteenth century, it was a highly praised and very early example of a woodland garden, predating the English taste for the Picturesque by almost a generation. In 1710, it was described by Thomas Player as “a most natural wood, cut through with winding paths and decorated with summer houses, cascades and statuary......”
"...a fountain with a charming rock in the middle, on the top was a swan seated in a nest of rushes, the water gushing out from every part, ...in a green plat was Diana holding a buck by the horns..."

An almost obligatory stop on the "Northern Tour" of English gardens, there was no doubt that Ray Wood's natural style influenced many of the great landscape "improvers" of the eighteenth century.

Ray Wood today boasts a wonderful collection of rhododendrons, some 500 species and 300 important hybrids, along with many other rare shrubs and trees, among them other members of the family Ericaceae, such as Vaccinium and Gaultheria, and considerable collections of genera such as Sorbus, Magnolia, Rosa and Acer.

Set out around the framework of serpentine pathways that is almost the only remnant of the earlier woodland garden, the open glades are protected by a high canopy of broad-leaved and coniferous trees, with under plantings of bamboo and hardy shrubs providing lower level shelter from harsh winter winds. The acidic soil is rich in humus, well drained and moisture retentive, providing perfect conditions for a huge diversity of acid-loving plants, including a wealth of native grasses, mosses, rushes and ferns.

The extraordinary planting design is by James Russell, VMH, (1920-1996), who formed and gave the Sunningdale Collection to Castle Howard and who also came to live here and curate the collections. Many of the plants are historic importance, like the Rhododendron thomsonii, which was raised at Sunningdale by, as it was then, the Standish & Noble Nursery, from seed of its original introduction by Joseph Hooker (later Sir Joseph and Director of Kew) along with other rhododendrons from West Nepal and Sikkim. Many of the plants held are the direct, genetically identical descendants propagated vegetatively over generations from the original introductions. Plants gathered by many of the other great plant collectors, for example, Wilson, Farrer, Purdom, Rock and Kingdom-Ward, are also represented here.

All of the collection is documented on our Plant Records Database, this contains a vast amount of information for each individual plant, the links below point to extracts from the database of live plants. For each plant the following information is shown: