Kew’s rescue mission: arborists head to Scotland after hundreds of trees and plants felled by Storm Éowyn

Storm damage at Benmore Botanic Garden in Argyll, where about 300 trees were destroyed. Photograph: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

For more than a century, whenever winter came to Scotland, they stood tall against the wind and rain and snow. But last month, battered by Storm Éowyn, hundreds of rare and historic trees in the living collection of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh were lost.

The charity has four sites in Scotland. Its tallest tree in Edinburgh, a 166-year-old Himalayan cedar, fell during Éowyn’s gusts of up to 80mph, while Benmore Botanic Garden on the west coast has suffered “unimaginable” devastation.