Benmore Gardens set in a majestic mountain setting is a vital link to disappearing wilderness. The Benmore Gardens are a sub-station of the Edinburgh Botanic Garden. Reflecting the two collections that dominate the Garden, Benmore has been rightly described as both a living textbook of the genus Rhododendron, and with its unrivaled diversity of coniferous trees, as a National Pinetum. The steep area of hillside has been developed to create plantings to represent the different flora of Bhutan, Chile, Japan and Tasmania. Visitors enter the Garden through the great Redwood Avenue planted in 1863 by Piers Patrick, a wealthy American who had bought the estate the year before. He began the process of planting which was continued by subsequent owners. The avenue now forms one of the finest entrances to any botanic garden anywhere in the world. In the wild the sierra redwoods are native to the western slopes of Sierra Nevada in California and may live 3,500 years, reaching over 91m and weighing 6,000 tons. Their longevity is attributed to their massive trunk buttresses and to the red-brown bark which can be up to 60cm thick, making the tree partially fire resistant.