“These plants would have been the Van Dycks of their day, there was that much kudos attached to them,” said the head gardener Scott Jamieson, in front of some of the oldest, rarest camellias in the western world, which are flourishing, despite the odds, in South Yorkshire.
Jamieson has led a team on a remarkable £5m heritage project. On Friday, the restored camellia house at Wentworth Woodhouse, one of the grandest stately homes in Britain, was formally opened as a global teahouse.
