Castlewellan Forest Park is located in the town of

Castlewellan Castlewellan () is a small town in County Down, in the south-east of Northern Ireland close to the Irish Sea. It is beside Castlewellan Lake and Slievenaslat mountain, southwest of Downpatrick. It lies between the Mourne Mountains and Slieve C ...

in County Down, Northern Ireland. The park covers some 460 hectares, including woodland and a 40 hectare lake. It was opened to the public in 1967 after the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture purchased the land from the Annesley family. Features of the park include the National Arboretum, the Peace Maze and Castlewellan Castle.

National Arboretum

It contains the national

Arboretum An arboretum (plural: arboreta) in a general sense is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, man ...

of Northern Ireland, started in 1740, which contains trees from Asia, North and South America, and Australasia.

Giant sequoia ''Sequoiadendron giganteum'' (giant sequoia; also known as giant redwood, Sierra redwood, Sierran redwood, California big tree, Wellingtonia or simply big treea nickname also used by John Muir) is the sole living species in the genus ''Sequoiade ...

were planted in the 1850s. They are used by

treecreepers The treecreepers are a family (biology), family, Certhiidae, of small passerine Aves, birds, widespread in wooded regions of the Northern Hemisphere and sub-Saharan Africa. The family contains eleven species in two genus, genera, ''Certhia'' and ...

, who burrow into its bark and make nests. The gardens originally contained over 1800 species of trees and shrubs, planted by

Hugh Annesley, 5th Earl Annesley Hugh Annesley, 5th Earl Annesley (26 January 1831 – 15 December 1908) was a British military commissioned officer, officer and Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament for County Cavan (UK Parliament constituency), County C ...

and his head gardener. Over 700 taxa still exist in the arboretum, including at least 30 champion trees. The gardens suffered from a decline in maintenance in the late 1990s due to a shortage of resources. Work to restore and conserve a number of areas, including the greenhouses and the Moorish Tower, was carried out between 2012 and 2014. Comprehensive plans for restoration of the whole park have been agreed between the Forest Service and the local Council. In 2021 a project to further restore the arboretum and the courtyard was announced. The park received £5.5 million, with half coming from the

National Lottery Heritage Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

and half from

Newry, Mourne and Down District Council Newry, Mourne and Down District Council (Irish: ''Comhairle Ceantair an Iúir, Mhúrn agus an Dúin'') is a local authority in Northern Ireland that was established on 1 April 2015. It replaces Down District Council and Newry and Mourne District ...

Peace Maze

The peace maze located in the park was constructed between 2000 and 2001. It contains 6000

yew trees

Yew is a common name given ...

planted by volunteers from Northern Ireland. It was the longest permanent hedge maze in the world until July 2007, when the Pineapple Garden Maze in

Wahiawa Wahiawa ( haw, Wahiawā, ) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Honolulu County, Hawaii, United States, on the island of Oahu. It is in the Wahiawa District, on the plateau or "central valley" between the two volcanic mountains that comprise the ...

, Hawaii was extended.

Castlewellan Castle

Castlewellan Castle is a Scottish baronial castle built by the

Annesley Annesley is a village and civil parish in the Ashfield district of Nottinghamshire, England, between Hucknall and Kirkby-in-Ashfield. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 1,162 (including Annesley Woodhouse to the west). Annesley Hall ...

family between 1856 and 1858. It stands close to the entrance of the arboretum overlooking Castlewellan Lake and was built on the site of an old church. The castle was built by The 4th Earl Annesley, who commissioned the Scottish architect

William Burn William Burn (20 December 1789 – 15 February 1870) was a Scottish architect. He received major commissions from the age of 20 until his death at 81. He built in many styles and was a pioneer of the Scottish Baronial Revival,often referred t ...

to design it. It was built of locally quarried granite by the Parker partnership of Liverpool. On the death of the unmarried 4th Earl in 1874, the original estate, much larger than the present park, passed to his brother Hugh, 5th Earl Annesley, who considerably enhanced the arboretum. His son, Francis, 6th Earl Annesley, inherited in 1908 but was killed in the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

in 1914, after which the earldom passed to his cousin Walter and the Castlewellan Estate to his sister, Lady Mabel. She left it to her son Gerald Francis Annesley (born Gerald Sowerby), who sold it to the government. Since 1974, after standing empty for ten years, the castle has been used as a Christian conference centre.

Flora

The Castlewellan Gold

Leyland cypress The Leyland cypress, ''Cupressus'' × ''leylandii'', often referred to simply as leylandii, is a fast-growing coniferous evergreen tree much used in horticulture, primarily for hedges and screens. Even on sites of relatively poor culture, plant ...

was developed in the park from a mutant tree. It was selected by the park director, John Keown, and named ''Cupressus macrocarpa'' 'Keownii' in 1963. The original specimen is located in the ornamental gardens. The national

of Northern Ireland is located in the park. It was first started in 1740 and contains trees from Asia, Australasia, and North and South America, including

Japanese Maple ''Acer palmatum'', commonly known as Japanese maple, palmate maple, or smooth Japanese maple (Japanese: ''irohamomiji'', , or ''momiji'', (栴), is a species of woody plant native to Japan, Korea, China, eastern Mongolia, and southeast Russia. ...

and

planted in the 1850s. In May 2018 the arboretum was awarded a plaque by the International Dendrology Society for having a "dendrological collection of exceptional merit." The society encourages the conservation of rare and endangered plants and trees. The Giant sequoia were planted as saplings in 1856. They were from a group of seed collected in California by renowned plant collector

William Lobb William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

and grown in a nursery from 1853. One of the trees has developed 19 separate trunks, a form rarely seen in cultivated specimens of this plant. The tree was voted Northern Ireland's Tree of the Year for 2018. File:Gateway at Castlewellan Arboretum - geograph.org.uk - 35314.jpg, Gateway at Castlewellan Arboretum File:Giant Redwoods in the Castlewellan Castle Arboretum (geograph 2842154).jpg, Giant sequoia

References

{{Authority control Forests and woodlands of Northern Ireland Parks in County Down Arboreta in Northern Ireland