The remarkable tree trail takes you on a walking tour of some of the most outstanding trees within the grounds of Plas Dinam. These include native veteran and ancient trees and 9 Powys Champions, 3 of which are Welsh Champions and 1 is a British Champion!
The wider Plas Dinam estate includes some exceptional ancient trees, including the Llandinam Oak, which has a girth of 9.56m – making it the 14th biggest in Wales! The county of Powys actually has some of the biggest oaks in Britain. The best way to find these trees is to look at the Ancient Tree Inventory where you can see the locations of ancient, veteran and notable trees. You’ll notice just how many there are in this part of Wales, making it a very special place to visit.
The house grounds also include two extra special trees that were planted recently in memory of Lord and Lady Davies, who passed away in 2024 and 2020. This pair of Acer’s will grow up tall and look out at the house and grounds where Lord and Lady Davies bought up their family. The tree trail walking route takes you directly past these two trees.
David Alderman from The Tree Register has visited the grounds to log some of these remarkable trees. He had the following to say about some of trees (we’re hoping to have him visit again so we can get all the trees recorded properly):
The original Corstorphine Plane (Acer pseudoplatanus ‘Corstorphinense’) grew at Corstorphine near Edinburgh and was referenced in 1679 but blew down during the Boxing Day storm of 1998. Many trees claim to be propagated from the original and some are grafted whilst others are seedlings. The one thing they have in common is that they fade from being brilliantly yellow/gold to green in a matter of
six weeks. There is a similar sized Corstorphinense growing at Stanage Park but yours is taller and so is the Powys champion!
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The clump of nine Acer pseudoplatanus ‘Brilliantissimum’ within the iron fenced roundel in the adjacent meadow, must look astonishing in the spring and even more so from the air! Whilst not champions for size I can’t recall ever seeing such a large scale planting of this species! At Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire, they
have six planted in a close row but otherwise they are usually individually placed around a garden.
Another small more recently planted golden tree is the Dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides ‘Gold Rush’ (Golden Oji), which was originally raised in Japan and introduced to Britain in 1993. Many are growing rapidly from plantings in the early 2000’s and so it is hard to keep track of which are the biggest and tallest but yours is currently amongst the Top 5 we have recorded in Wales. The Field maple has one of the fattest trunks of any Field maple in all of Wales. It is only beaten by one other at Llanfilo, Powys, a perhaps dubious champion growing within a stone wall! Big old Field maple are infrequently found in Wales, although more so the nearer Offa’s Dyke you get!
This blog will be continuously updated as we discover more about our Remarkable Trees, so
please do check back.