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Magnolia 'Eric Savill'

• Message 1. 

  Posted by hereisabee (U2342191) on Sunday, 4th April 2010

  Gardens are never static, often you visit expecting to see a certain plant which has gone over, yet find another that is at it's best. Such was an Easter Horticultural Treasure hunt at Savill Gardens today and the the star of the show was the Magnolia 'Eric Savill'. My new camera is not entirely colour accurate but in these pictures it is near enough. What display of cerise pink flowers, these large magnolias are slow to flower after planting, however well worthwhile in the end.
  
  

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  Posted by Salino (U2550900) on Sunday, 4th April 2010

  ...gorgeous.

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  Posted by hereisabee (U2342191) on Saturday, 10th April 2010

  Good to see Alys getting to Cornwall to look at the Magnolia genus, I remember Trewithin from the early 1980's not so long ago in tree time. I was always in awe of the plants at Lanhydrock which seemed taller, but they did not have so many varieties. However a botanical cathedral of Magnolia campbellii mollicomata, and veitchii. While on the theme Killerton near Exeter had a gully of the scented Magnolia watsonii or is it wieseneri? Those dreaded botanists always making changes, after all at Caerhays Gardens I saw the very Michelia that Roy Lancaster fell out of when trying to pick a bloom. That genus seems now to be absorbed by Magnolia by noting the labels in the Savill Gardens Temperate House.
  
  

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  Posted by hereisabee (U2342191) on Thursday, 22nd April 2010

  By chance the the 2007 Magnolia Year Book came into my possession, with a super article about this Magnolia. So have added dome more detail, copied below.
  
  The story of this magnolia goes back a hundred years, when the renown plant hunter Ernest Wilson was collecting seeds of a very fine magnolia he believed was Magnolia denudata, when with twelve tepals it was really M. sprengeri. Wilson would delegate the mechanical collecting of seed to locals and this seed went to the famous Veich family nursery.
  
  When Sir Harry Veitch retired in 1913 the plants grown from seed had not flowered and were sold of at auction, going to Kew, Bodnant and one to Caerhays Cornwall. The Kew and Bodnant plants took many year to flower and were white, but luck went to the Caerhays plant which flowered in 1919 and was a beautiful rose pink. Hence Magnolia sprengeri 'Diva' was born and subsequent generation of seeds from this plant has yielded a number of excellent cultivars including Eric Savill.
  
  It is suggested by Jim Gardiner from whose article this information was taken, that the Chinese collectors mixed pink and white forms into the original seed batch which the Chinese called Ying-Chun-Shu - the Harbinger of Spring.

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  Posted by janerowena (U10782401) on Friday, 23rd April 2010

  Just stunning, hereisabee. I adore magnolias in any form. There is a stunning magnolia walk at Jermyn's, the old home of the Hilliers, now a tearoom.

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