The summer heat wave and drought (June-Aug), the winter flooding (January-March) and the early spring drought (Mar-June) have all combined to make for a very challenging 9 months.
As a consequence we have lost approximately 50 trees with many of the others only just about hanging on by the skin of their teeth. On the brighter side, most of the oaks are now thriving, we have not lost any elms and have only lost 2 trees from the avenue. We are still confident that we can be successful but in order to reduce future losses, from now on we need to adhere to the following policy as closely as possible.
- Follow a slightly less adventurous tree selection policy
- Limit planting to a maximum of 15 trees annually, ideally in close proximity to each other
- Choose smaller bare rooted specimens
- Only plant at the optimum time (late November/early December)
- Use hydration bags
- Thoroughly mulch at time of planting
The next planting session is being planned for one of the following dates:- Sat 28th Nov / Sat 5th Dec / Sat 12th Dec
Concerning tree identification labelling, we have held off doing this until the trees have established and grown a little larger but certainly some now have reaches this stage so we will start by using a relatively low cost simple hand written but durable labelling system before moving on to a more conventional permanent system once the guards come down.
