Redwoods, those soaring giants of the forest, conjure up images of distant locations, from Californian to Canada. But these iconic trees are about to become established much closer to home – in the beautiful grounds of Lytham Hall.

Plant Heritage is a body which promotes and protects a multitude of species at special sites housing national collections and the hall’s historic grounds have come through the first phase to being approved as a centre for the propagation, conservation and study of redwoods.

It’s a major feather in the hall’s cap and it is expected to attract national and international visitors interested in studying some of the world’s oldest and biggest trees as well as providing an educational resource for young people.

The driving force behind the project is John Hornyak, one of the north’s most knowledgeable and most passionate tree experts. He has been planning the scheme, on and off, for the last 12 years.

‘We hear an awful lot about saving the whale and protecting giant pandas but there is not the same focus when it comes to a plant that was on the planet long before any animal,’ said John, who oversees the army of volunteers maintaining the Lytham Hall grounds.

The redwoods, he added, were endangered in their native land because of ferocious fires, poor forestry management and the familiar catalogue of environmental issues affecting us all.

John and his team plan to plant 30 different forms of sequoiadendron giganteum – the giant redwood – and up to 20 coastal redwood, or sequoia sempervirens. It’s a safe bet we won’t be around to see them in all their 380ft glory and, in a way, that makes his dedication all the more remarkable. He is beyond retirement age but his eyes are firmly set on the future.

Although redwoods have been known to be over 3,000 years old, they didn’t come to our shores until the mid-1800s thanks to those voracious Victorian plant hunters. John, former head of horticulture at Myerscough College, said our region had what is known as Goldilocks conditions for redwoods – a climate ‘not too hot, not too cold, but just right’.

Not all of them grow to cathedral proportions. There are varieties that propagate across ground rather than growing tall and they will also find a place at Lytham Hall.

John is no stranger these remarkable trees. He planted three at Myerscough in 1973 and they have now reached 60ft. However, his first experience was as a ten-year-old, climbing to the top of a redwood at Windermere with his brother. John said his mother was terrified they would fall and he would prefer today’s young visitors to enjoy them from ground level.

Part of the project involves keeping an efficient database of the trees and John hopes to track down and record every redwood in Lancashire. For the Lytham Hall project he has been scouring the internet for nurseries that could supply young trees and then he stumbled across a specialist just down the road at Euxton.

‘These trees are hugely important for a variety of reasons,’ he said. ‘In a way they are a metaphor for modern times – do we care and do something to save them or just stand back and shrug our shoulders?’ It’s an easy choice for John.