Arts & Crafts Elizabethan revival estate that is now the
headquarters of the Royal Horticultural Society. It will
grow to approximately fifteen feet, with spiky red leaves.
This solitary plantation would be in marked contrast to
the visionary plan to plant a million trees, which Mrs.
Astor so enthusiastically explained to me years ago. Nor
would it be immediately vital to our survival, as are so
many of the agricultural trees I have
seen being planted from India to
upstate New York. These provide
sustenance. Our tree would be
commemorative, decorative, a
demure, refined, elegant little
tree, planted just into the lawn,
surrounded by the giants at the
perimeter.
We call it the Jubilee Tree because
we planted it during the year of the
Queen's Diamond Jubilee, thereby
for posterity, fixing the time in
history. Importantly, also, the tree
celebrates the owner of Foxholm's
fiftieth birthday, his family, our visit
and the successful exhibition in England during the Jubilee
and the London Olympics of my collection of American
photography at the American Museum in Britain.
These events and happenings, then, fresh in our minds,
will recede into the past as time moves forward. But the
HYLAND
