A brief biography taken with a few amendments from a draft written by John Simmons for Anthony Howard, obituary editor of The Times, and published in this newspaper on the 13th May 1996.

Combine an encyclopaedic knowledge and memory for plants, with an intuitive flair for design then drive these abilities with an unswerving dedication and you have some part of the character of James Philip Cuming Russell that allowed him to succeed in his great dream of creating one of the most important new arboreta in Britain.

Educated at Eton, and intended by his family for either the army or diplomatic service, he was determined to be a gardener, and was to study botany at Trinity, Cambridge, but the Second World War intervened and he was commissioned in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry.

In 1939 his Father Major Herbert Russell MC, and a distant cousin (N. Hamilton-Smith Esq.) had jointly purchased the famous nursery of Standish and Noble that was originally founded in 1874.  In 1943, James Russell was invalided out of the army, and progressively took up the challenge of managing the nursery.  It had long been in decline, but, he learnt fast, and under his care, the Sunningdale Nurseries in Surrey developed, and its catalogues of the 1960’s show that it held a remarkably extensive range of rare and garden worthy plants, along with an attractively designed and planted display garden.

In 1955, with Sacheverell Sitwell, Russell co-authored the first part of Old Garden Roses, and then the second part with Wilfred Blunt.  This link to roses extended in 1956 when the Nurseries wisely employed the now doyen of gardening, Graham Thomas OBE, VMH, who added his already famous rose collection to the nursery.  Involving Graham Thomas with the management of the nursery, allowed James Russell to expand the garden design side of the business, and this led to his undertaking feature designs and plantings or full developments for over 200 gardens in the British Isles, as well as other gardens in Italy, France, Belgium and Nassau. His work ranged from plantings on large estates, such as for Sir James Horlick on the Island of Gigha, Henry Mcllhenny at Glenveagh and Rudding Park for Sir Everard Radcliffe, through many medium sized gardens, to work for Arup Associates on greening buildings, for Wiggins Teape at Guildford, and The World Centre of General Accident outside Perth.

Rhododendrons were another of his great interests and in 1960 he published Rhododendrons at Sunningdale and this marked a pivotal change in his life.
Looking back, he had become bound by historic links to Standish & Noble’s fame in raising newly discovered rhododendrons.  Sir Joseph Hooker (later Director of Kew) sent seed of his Sikkim collection to the nursery in 1849 and by 1854 they had established no fewer than 26 new species from this source, and in 1858 flowered the beautiful Rhododendron thompsonii for the first time in cultivation.  And it was the progeny of these plants, along with many later introductions and breeding successes of the nursery, that James Russell took with him in 1968 (when the nursery was sold) to what was to become an even greater endeavour in the horticulturally unlikely setting of the edge of the North York Moors.

His great friend, the late George Howard, of Castle Howard, had invited Russell to live on the estate, continuing his garden design work, but also helping with development of the garden as a tourist attraction.  Work started with a very large Rose Garden, concentrating on old varieties, and the 30-acre Ray Wood that was to house the rhododendrons.  On Ray Wood’s north facing slope, James Russell went onto establish a masterpiece of woodland gardening.  The rhododendrons flourished, and to them he added an amazing collection of temperate forest plants, all carefully arranged and managed.  But this was only a prelude.

The past two decades have seen an unparalleled period of temperate plant introductions and Russell brilliantly designed and developed George Howard’s vision of an arboretum – which, with continuing support from the Howard family, eventually expanded to cover nearly 130 acres.  In this endeavour all his career experience could be brought to bear.  His noted ‘green fingers’ raised thousands of seedlings in a nursery attached to his house, he understood how to design and layout the collections for the best growth of the plants, for beauty too, with a sweeping landscape to hold the scientifically unique collection he assembled.

He tracked and fully documented all his plants and, by concentrating on authentic natural provenance material, created a living library that will continue to advance our future understanding of the performance of trees and shrubs in cultivation.  Interestingly, the climatic extremes of recent years have already allowed plants to succeed at Castle Howard that have failed elsewhere.