It’s the most wonderful time of the year!
Planting trees is hard work. I can’t complain, I don’t plant most of them. I salute NW Forestry who managed to get the bulk of the 147,000 trees in the ground between November and the end of March. They went up Low Fell in rain, sleet, snow, miserably windy drizzly weather. It is STEEP, and a lot of the trees went in nearly at the summit which involved a lot of climbing up and down the fell carrying heavy tree bags. The ground is stony, and you have to keep putting your spade in several times until it goes in far enough to ensure the tree is in good enough ground to grow.
Just coordinating it can be tricky, sorting out where to park and how to get the trees delivered to site and checking whose fields you need to cross and making sure you’ve got permission. Then there is all the MUD. Winter in the Lake District is a very muddy thing.
So now, the trees are in leaf, many of them have grown several inches already, and it’s brilliant to see. The air is vibrant with birdsong and insect noise. Those puny little sticks that were planted in the winter months are turning into trees before our very eyes. On Low Fell, some of the ones we planted just two years ago are already bigger than me (I’m fairly tall, for scale).
We have planted a good mix of trees and shrubs up the fell this season. Here they are in the proportions we’ve planted:
| Alder | 14440 |
| Aspen | 10880 |
| Bird cherry | 2625 |
| Blackthorn | 3015 |
| Crab apple | 2925 |
| Downy birch | 16310 |
| Goat willow | 2500 |
| Hawthorn | 20370 |
| Hazel | 14740 |
| Holly | 1000 |
| Rowan | 11980 |
| Scots pine | 2375 |
| Sessile oak | 21395 |
| Field maple | 1320 |
| Grey willow | 3500 |
| Eared willow | 376 |
| Silver birch | 11000 |
| Dogwood | 575 |
| Broom | 135 |
| Spindle | 100 |
| Juniper | 2180 |
| Wild Cherry | 2005 |
| Buckthorn | 150 |
| Alder buckthorn | 60 |
| Elder | 120 |
| Yew | 410 |
| Wayfaring Tree | 60 |
| Guelder Rose | 195 |
| Small-leaved lime | 800 |
I like to put in a good mix, since we are planting woodlands for the future. Who knows what conditions will be like, what tree diseases or weather conditions or threats from invasive species there might be. So, by planting a good variety, some of them stand a chance of developing into veteran trees that provide homes for wildlife.
It’s amazing to see that even 2-year-old trees are immediately used by birds as perches. The rowans and bird cherries are producing flowers already, so the hope is that if birds eat the berries, perch on the trees and pop the seeds out with a package of fertiliser, then more trees will come of their own accord without all that back-breaking work.
(Photo: Whinchat perched on alder branch)
At 13 Acres, the trees are doing really well too. The first image is from March 2021. The second is May 2024. Not bad for 3 years' growth! While they were little, the surrounding vegetation would have swamped them, so they all got mulch mats. Now they are well above the vegetation and creating their own mulch and leaf-mould. Despite all the hard work and difficult conditions, the results are tremendously rewarding. Tree-mendously. Sorry, I just couldn't resist that one.
