Thursday the 8th of January was a fairly normal day for the gardeners of Cornwall. It was cold and raining heavily, and while strong winds were forecast this part of the UK is used to storms.
Cornwall makes the tip of the South West peninsula of Britain. There is sea to the north, west and south, with the county of Devon is to the east. With prevailing winds coming from the south west and winter storms are common; they’re the price we pay in the South West for our otherwise fairly benign climate.
The woodland garden at Trelissick in early autumn
Mild winters and cool summers, with usually plentiful rain through the year, allow Cornish gardens to be particularly bountiful. Many of the big Cornish gardens are filled with notable collections of plants.
By mid afternoon on Thursday it had become clear that this storm was going to pack a punch. By the middle of the afternoon a red weather warning had been issued: this storm was expected to pose a serious risk to life.
Once In A Lifetime?
At the time of writing it has been reported that one person lost their life in Storm Goretti. While any death is tragic it was a miracle there weren’t more fatalities.
Winds gusting to around 120mph swept in across the county, damaging houses, bringing down power lines and toppling thousands of trees. There are always those who dismiss weather warnings as scare-mongering – these people thrive on Facebook – but generally the majority of people took the warnings seriously. Schools and places of work closed early and people went straight home; this undeniably saved many lives.
A gardener at Trewithen stands next to the roots of a fallen tree (image courtesy of Trewithen Gardens)
Three things made this storm particularly destructive. Firstly the ground was saturated from lots of rain in the preceding days and weeks. Secondly this was a very powerful storm. Thirdly the winds came from an unusually northerly direction. Cornish gardens are usually well sheltered from the prevailing south-westerly winds, but winds approaching from other directions can prove damaging even when winds aren’t as strong.
Destruction
Images shared on social media by the gardeners of Cornwall’s iconic gardens show carnage. Huge trees ripped out of the ground or snapped like matchsticks, lying across each other in a tangled mess.
Some of these trees had historical and horticultural significance.
Some fallen plants were of particular value (image courtesy of Trewithen Gardens)
The damage isn’t just the lost trees, it’s the things they damage and destroy on their way down. Cornish gardens are often densely planted and in many cases it would be impossible for a large tree to fall and not hit something special.
Trewithen lost over 50 trees in one night. St. Michael’s Mount lost 80. Tremenheere Sculpture Garden barely has a large tree left standing. Fox Rosehill Gardens, featured here last year, has suffered extensive damage. Every large Cornish garden is reporting significant losses of trees, with very few reporting that they haven’t lost high value species.
The island garden at St. Michael’s Mount seen from Tremenheere. Both gardens have suffered massive damage
However with so many trees lost there is a real and present danger that gardens are now more open to damage from future storms.
In short Storm Goretti was a disaster for the gardens of Cornwall.
Lessons For The Future
The priority now is to recover gardens. We’re a long way from an estimate of how much this will cost, but the gardens of Cornwall will echo with the sounds of chainsaws for some time.
The interesting question won’t be what has fallen and why. The interesting question will be what is still standing.
Fox Rosehill Gardens, featured here during summer of 2025, have suffered extensive damage
Big old trees are at the core of a Cornish garden; they are also its weakness. We gardeners love big old trees but nature doesn’t.
Tall trees are more susceptible to damage by wind because their height puts their canopies into higher wind speeds; if wind is measured at 100mph at ground level it will be quite a bit faster the further up you go. When big old trees catch very strong winds the winds will, sooner or later, win particularly if the tree is unhealthy or in decline.
Are Big Trees A Liability?
The hard question to answer is whether big trees are a liability.
It’s not hard to answer from a clinical and empirical point of view: the answer is yes, the evidence is currently seen across the county of Cornwall.
It’s a hard question from a human perspective. People like big trees. They represent permanence in a world of turmoil, benign forces that protect us from hot sun in summer and shelter us from wind in winter. We have a different emotional response to a tree than to a flower in a field, and this is ingrained in our culture.
The valley at Trebah has largely survived, but with so many shelter trees gone the future is uncertain.
I think it’s good to have respect for trees and to have big old trees around us, but nature disagrees. A big old tree heading towards its inevitable demise is a liability in the hard world of nuture. The natural world favours youth, and trees that are at their peak of health and performance – ability to further their species – are the ones that nature values.
A tree that grows taller than its neighbours is more susceptible to lightning strikes. A tree that is ageing is more susceptible to action by certain fungi; humans value fungi and there is great interest in conserving them, but they’re often not great news for the organism they feed on. If a tree is ailing and weakening due to age then it will be damaged or felled by strong winds whether it’s actually dead or not.
English ivy, widely known as a nuisance invader in the US, doesn’t kill healthy trees. However if a tree is already ailing then the ivy takes advantage, growing vigorously, and ultimately large amounts of ivy in the canopy of a weakened tree will cause it to fall. Ivy speeds up the process of regeneration in a woodland by bumping off ailing trees before their time, and the resulting hole left by a fallen tree allows new trees to grow.
Management For The Future
The cruel truth is that the level of damage experienced during Storm Goretti was probably inevitable at some point. Before my friends and colleagues in Cornwall ostracise me from our professional circles, let me explain.
Cornish gardens are old. It’s how we like them, but as I’ve just said above nature is less sentimental.
In the cold light of day we know that trees don’t live forever, and we know that big trees need extra care and maintenance to prolong their lives. We also know that dense planting under and around big trees is always at risk. We’ve all had to remove fallen branches from shrubs after storms, and watched tree surgeons carefully to make sure they don’t damage other plants.
Take away the sentiment; step away from our love of big trees and look at gardens clinically. What would make sense is to renew trees so that there are always new younger trees coming on. This would mean proactively removing trees simply because they are big and old just to make space to plant new trees.
What’s in store for the remaining trees (image courtesy of Trewithen Garden)
It follows nature’s model of woodland management but in a more controlled way. The gardeners get to choose which trees are removed, when and how. Bringing trees down in an organised way is going to be a lot less damaging than hoping for the best and dealing with damage after a significant storm.
As garden management strategies go this would be very unpopular. Even if we as gardeners are able to put out sentiment to one side it’s unlikely to wash with garden management committees, and it would certainly be unpopular with visitors. I personally don’t believe in democratic gardening, where everyone gets a say about anything and everything to do with trees and gardens, but it’s easy to find ourselves on the wrong side of an action group.
There is a lot of sentiment around trees and it can be challenging enough to do work that is absolutely necessary, let alone work that is preventative. This sentiment is all well and good, but there is a deeply discomforting question that needs to be asked: would the damage to Cornish gardens have been less after Storm Goretti if gardens had adopted a policy of proactive renewal?
The Future Of Cornish Gardens
This is not the first time centuries-old gardens have suffered damage.
The Abbey Garden on Tresco, a subtropical paradise just off the Cornish coast, has suffered extensive damage verging on the catastrophic. However many of the plants that have been damaged or destroyed by falling trees were planted after a deadly fortnight of cold weather killed enormous numbers of tender plants in 1987. Many of these had in turn been planted in the aftermath of a destructive storm in 1929. Tresco’s world famous Abbey Gardens are the very embodiment of a garden rising from the ashes.
This beech tree at Pencarrow is a survivor from a previous storm that took many trees around it
Gardeners don’t like being beaten. After the sadness at the destruction has passed a sense of defiance kicks in. New plants will be acquired and planted, and gardens will move forward.
There is always hope, and it will be interesting to see how the gardens of Cornwall not only bounce back but develop for the future.
The damage from just that one storm in heartbreaking but you raise an interesting question. Nature is not sentimental treating gardens and prize specimens the same as any natural landscape. In wild environments plant communities are constantly changing. It’s the process of succession and renewal. As you suggest to move forward we will need to be equally brutal.
Sacrifice elements of a garden to protect the whole; hard but possibly necessary.
A really well balanced response to what sound like devastating storm damage to Cornwall’s historic and other trees. It gave me an entirely new angle to the inevitable loss of ageing trees (I’m no expert) and of course all garden losses, however much grieved, open up opportunities in design and planting.
We love big trees, but the destruction that comes from allowing them to fall during storms is terrible.
I’ve been seeing the pictures online – is there anything those of us from far away can do to help? I am bringing two groups from North America to Cornwall in the summer, if the gardens are ready for visitors by then.
In the Pacific NW, we had a similar incident a few years ago and large conifers toppled over like toys. It was stunning to see the photos but nature has moved on and it isn’t apparent that it ever happened.
ps – hello to the other Lois!
I should have said it isn’t apparent that it ever happened to those of us who didn’t experience damage. To those who experienced the damage, it will be a forever memory. A friend had 6 trees fall on their house and their lives are forever changed. Anyone who has build a garden or home that was damaged will always look at the place and remember what was there before the storm.
I was with a respected Cornish Head Gardener yesterday; he said he’s going to be a bit paranoid about winds and naturally leaning trees for some time yet.
The absolute majority of Cornish gardens will be back up and running by then, but they will all bear the scars of this storm. By far the very best thing you can do is to visit gardens as planned; the biggest disaster of all would come if people stayed away this year, either assuming they’re in the way or that it’s inappropriate to come and see the damage, or that the damage is so much that there’s nothing to see.
It is always sad to lose a tree, no matter the circumstances. It’s especially tough to lose a number of trees, as well as whatever else they destroy in the wake of their falling. Nature can be very unforgiving. From big, old tree losses on my own property, I have learned to appreciate what remains, and try to make the best of it. Thanks for reporting on this, Ben.
I went down to Cornwall yesterday to learn about the damage myself. Yes damage was catastrophic but it wasn’t total. But there are questions that should be asked about woodland gardens for the future.
I’m so sorry to learn about this – hope that Cornwall did not loose more people. What about people’s houses? You raise a point Ben that those of us in western North Carolina are wondering about after Hurricane Helene. The beautiful canopy of oak, beech, hickory etc. in our national forest is there because most of it was clear-cut decades ago, and the forest came back all at once. Now much of it is gone, and I have lots of questions. On the worry side, what about the invasive plant species and rhododendron hells that will move in? What about the felled timber that becomes a fire hazard? On the hopeful side, will the gaps in the canopy now allow a healthy succession of plants and animals to take place? Will the gaps encourage plants that have been dormant to re-establish themselves? Our arboretum was hammered, their careful design and selective culling tossed aside. Now they are asking the same questions and feeling their way into the approaches they will take in restoration.
It seems mean and wrong to fell trees because they might pose a risk in the future, but to do so means having control over where and when a tree comes down, and minimises damage below. You raise an interesting point about forests; forest management is different from arboretum management, which in turn is different to the management of a woodland garden, and yet conventional approaches seem to treat them all the same.
Ben, I am so sorry, but thank you for your report and analysis. We are familiar with tornadoes and severe straight-line winds in Kentucky. I keep thinking that all the feeble trees here would have been taken out in the last five years with multiple devastating storms, but it seems that as soon as the arborists, many from out of state, get close to cleaning up, here comes another round. You are right: It’s wise to keep planting young trees.
The interesting question isn’t so much why did some trees fall, it’s why are some trees still standing.