The Man Who Didn't Plant Trees

My earliest practical conservation activity was tree planting - Rother Valley Country Park, a former opencast coal mine in South Yorkshire, as a schoolboy of maybe 12 or 13. I have a certificate somewhere to prove it. And I suspect it's the same story for a lot of people; tree planting will have been their first - and in many cases last - experience of practical conservation work. And after all, why not? What could be better than getting out in the fresh air and doing something positive for the environment? And besides, tree planting has a kind of glamour about it, a whiff of folk-heroism, conjuring up images of Johnny Appleseed and Elzéard Bouffier, the subject of Jean Giono's charming novella The Man Who Planted Trees.

But let's take a closer look at that last example. A man takes it upon himself to 're-forest' a 'desolate' valley in Provence, where only wild lavender grows. But hang on a minute - one man's desolate valley is another man's herb rich calcareous grassland. And why was it 'desolate' in the first place (assuming, for a moment, that we equate a lack of trees with desolation)? The guy's a shepherd; I have a sneaking suspicion that it was his own livestock that were maintaining its treeless state, preventing scrub encroachment and allowing open grassland species like the lavender to survive. It may even be that, left to its own devices, the landscape would - like most of temperate-zone Europe - have reverted to woodland anyway.

(As a literary aside, an ecologist friend of mine gets very agitated about The Lord of the Rings, in which the Barrow-downs continue to support treeless turf long after the men of Arnor - and presumably their grazing livestock - have succumbed to the Witchking of Angmar. That's maybe taking scientific veracity a bit too far...)

Lavender - quick, plant some trees on it!

But that wouldn't have made so charming a story; 'The Man Who Did Bugger All, But Let Natural Succession Take Its Course' is not as snappy a title. And it's not just that; a lack of action is perceived as a negative thing, an abandonment of responsibility. Also, crucially, a lack of direct action is a devilishly difficult thing to fund, particularly in these days of bureaucratic overkill. So we plant trees, because we can fill out the form saying we will buy 2000 whips of the following species, and this is how much they will cost, and this is how many days of volunteer labour input in kind will be involved in the planting, and our measurable output will be lots of little saplings sticking out of the ground in their serried rows, demonstrably there for all - particularly the funders - to see.

Which is why we have a whole green industry in this country devoted to servicing our moral imperative to do something for the environment, to plant 2000 trees for the new millennium or 60 trees for the Queen's Jubilee or whatever the current funder-friendly gimmick happens to be. And it is this need for trees that has driven the trade in cheap imports from Europe. As we are starting to realise to our cost, moving trees around the globe brings its own problems.

I worry that the most recent addition to our fungal pest flora - Chalara fraxinea, the causative agent of Ash Disease - will provoke a fresh flurry of tree planting. People like to help; it's like the decline of the honey bee. The most common reaction to news stories about Colony Collapse Disorder was to rush out and buy a bee hive and some bees, which is why London now has hive densities as high as 220 colonies per km2 and honey yields are down 78% on last year. It's well-meaning, but it's misguided.

Grass vetchling

I had an email from a client recently for whom I carried out a habitat survey; she's lucky enough to own what turned out to be quite a nice meadow. Maybe not SSSI standard, but certainly a meadow, with more Grass vetchling than I've ever seen in one place before. Her email was inviting me to a tree-planting event on the site. I replied asking her to think very carefully before she went ahead; the site is in a heavily wooded area, whereas good meadows are like hen's teeth. She reassured me that it was okay - the tree planting would only be around the edges.

I can't help but think that that's what Elzéard Bouffier probably said...

I doubt anything I say here will make any difference - people will always want to be seen to be doing something. But sometimes I wonder what the state of the UK would be if every penny that has been spent on tree planting had instead been spent on some other form of conservation action - appropriate management of our existing prime wildlife sites, or the joining together of such sites through land acquisition or management agreements, as the Wildlife Trusts are attempting though their Living Landscapes programme. But I don't speculate for too long; that way madness lies...

Bee Collective

I was lucky enough to be invited to the launch of an excellent project this week - the Bee Collective. Based a stone's throw from Victoria Station and sponsored by the Victoria Business Improvement District, the project is the brainchild of Caroline Birchall, who works at Natural England on landscape ecology in the capital.

Caroline Birchall introduces the project

At the heart of the project is a cooperative honey extraction facility. Honey extraction is a messy business and requires a large and expensive piece of kit, so many bee keepers struggle to extract their own honey at home. The Bee Collective facility allows London beekeepers to extract the golden stuff in return for a share of the honey, or money if they prefer.

The extraction facility

And here's the best bit - in collaboration with Capital Bee, the project aims to promote the creation of areas of bee forage in the capital. So when you extract your honey, you know you are supporting additional habitat for your bees.

Home on the Range

 

Thanks to the wonder of Twitter, we heard about a place called Sussex Prairies, near Henfield. It sounded like just the kind of place we enjoy, so on Sunday we headed out there. And we weren't disappointed! 

The sight that greeted us

Only planted in May 2008 by owners Paul and Pauline McBride, the site comprises 6 acres of borders and sculptures surrounded by mature trees, with glimpses of the South Downs beyond.

We've always been fans of this informal, naturalistic style of planting, but one thing we wanted to check out was - just how good are these plants for bees?

A sea of Rudbeckia

 Turns out they're fantastic! Some of the plants we saw were absolutely dripping with pollinators; the Veronicastrums were almost a health hazard, there were so many honey bees.

Pale Echinaceas with a splash of pink

Now this I love! Kniphofia and fennel - what a colour combination

 Anybody looking to work out the best plants for bees could do an awful lot worse than spending an hour wandering around Sussex Prairies with a notebook. A truly inspiring garden.

Drifts of Lythrum salicaria and Verbena bonariensis

Just stunning...

Monet goes to college

Now, we wouldn't normally recommend sowing seeds at this time of year, but this was an exceptional project. The University of Sussex want some areas of pollinator-friendly vegetation in the heart of the campus, and were poised to go ahead with no delay (I do so love a greenspace manager who says, 'Yes - let's do it. Now!). 

Oh to have the right kit for the job! This cuts, scarifies, rolls, cultivates...

Not wanting to disappoint, we have suggested sowing our 'Monet' mix as a stop-gap; being mainly poppies, it will hopefully germinate quickly and give us a show of colour in the Indian summer we are undoubtedly in for next month (ahem). The sites will then be there and reasonably weed-free so we can do some more ambitious seed-sowing in spring of next year.

Lovely tilth!

So, fingers crossed for us - we need a little bit of rain (not too much; during the night would be fine) and some nice warm days for the next three weeks or so. Even though the students are technically off on holiday, we still got lots of expressions of interest and support from passers-by.

Andy Jupp, of the Uni of Sussex, mixes seeds with sand

Doing the hand-jive?

Hive Aid

Isn't that a brilliant name for a bee event? Hive Aid - wish I'd thought of that! But I didn't - it was someone at Hanover Action for Sustainable Living, a great group of folks in a corner of Brighton, who organised an event yesterday to increase awareness of the plight of our bees.

I volunteered to give a talk on Wildlife Gardening for Pollinators, and headed down to Brighton in the afternoon. A terrible journey, starting with a road closure in Lindfield due to an accident and culminating in me getting horribly lost in the back streets of Brighton (I don't do Brighton by car, OK? I just don't). But I eventually stumbled upon the Hanover Community Centre, adorned with much bee-related artwork, and joined the fun.

The Hanover is a lovely little centre with an outside yard surrounded by a small garden, which includes a 'green wall'. There were stalls where you could make bee nest boxes and seed bombs, an observation hive, bee-friendly plants and some excellent face-painting.

The green wall

A lady called Heather gave a talk covering the life cycle and habits of bees, and I followed on with my presentation, to a good sized crowd of very attentive people, many of whom came up to speak to me afterwards. I even sold a few packets of FlowerScapes seeds.

All in all a lovely event - many thanks to Mei-Wah and Robyn for making me feel so welcome.

Bee-friendly Plant of the Month - the Rose

The ‘June gap’ is a strange phenomenon. It seems to be very much a British concept and even here it appears to apply to some areas of the country and not others. The basic idea is that once the spring flowers have finished and the grasses have reached their full growth there is a dip in the availability of forage for pollinators, roughly coinciding with the month of June.

No doubt this was more noticeable when meadows made up a larger proportion of our countryside; we have lost 97% of our traditional lowland flower-rich meadows since the 1940s and the rural countryside is now dominated by ryegrass and other wind-pollinated crops, making much of the year a forage ‘gap’. Conversely, we also have a larger area of urban land, around 20-25% of which is made up of gardens, with their artificially high diversity of flowers. Even so, it is worth bearing in mind that there is the potential for bees to go hungry in June and it is only prudent to try and select plants that will tide them through this period.

Hips don't lie

One good choice would be a rose. Having said that, there are over a hundred species and more than 6500 cultivars of the rose, and not all of them are created equal. As with many groups of plants popular in the garden, roses have been selected over hundreds of years for a variety of characteristics, primarily scent and flower colour/size. Along the way the ability to attract pollinators has been lost in some varieties, particularly the double-flowered cultivars, where the reproductive structures are obscured from view - and insect access - by concentric whorls of petals. 

Rosa glauca

So if you are gardening with pollinators in mind it is best to go for single-flowered varieties or even some of the species roses available on the market. My particular favourite is Rosa glauca, whose intense pink petals contrast beautifully with blue-grey foliage. The advantage of the species roses is that they are similar in flower structure to our native roses, such as Rosa canina, the Dog Rose, and the Field Rose, Rosa arvensis. Both are very attractive and work well in a native hedge; why not give them space in your garden and maybe try a little rosehip syrup in the Autumn?

Picking on wildflowers

Here's an article that causes me some difficulty : fad-for-wildflowers-is-ruining-formal-gardening-warns-Professor-of-Horticulture

There is much in it that is absolutely correct and needed saying, and there are parts that seem at best misguided and at worst a deliberate attempt to upset as many people as possible. To be fair to Prof Hitchmough, I know how the media work and I appreciate that what you might say is not always what appears in print. So I'll cut him some slack.

Let's look at the good bits first.

'Non-native planting can be just as good for wildlife'

Absolutely! Habitat specialist species are always going to need their lowland heaths and ancient woodlands, but a lot of generalists are perfectly happy utilising non-native species. Nectar, for instance, is sugar solution whether it comes from a dandelion or a dahlia.

'One of the most important things is to have 'diversity’ so that nectar is available throughout the year.' 

Yup, and the beauty of non-native planting is that you can 'design in' the flowering season, targeting times of the year when forage might be scarce elsewhere. Native meadow species, on the other hand, have spent thousands of years timing their flowering and seed production to coincide with an August hay cut, after which they kind of fizzle.

'The trend for wildlife gardening and Government targets on 'biodiversity’ means that traditional horticulture such as herbaceous borders full of exotic flowers is frowned upon.'

Well, yes, to a certain extent. I myself spent 20 years in the conservation sector preaching the doctrine of 'native is best', and in a way it is gratifying to see so many greenspace managers repeating it. But now I'm old and less idealistic I'm much more inclined to take the view that it's horses for courses. In a rural setting of course native species are the way to go, and local provenance natives if possible. After all, there may well be areas of semi-natural habitat nearby, and the best way to encourage functional ecosystems is to join the best remaining bits together with something appropriate.

And in an urban setting, if you want to try and recreate a native hay meadow, then why not? I for one would not complain. But let's not pretend that it's anything other than another kind of gardening. And if I want to plant a pollinator bed of non-natives, I'd appreciate it if I received the same response; go ahead, why not?

But what I'm finding more and more is that managers of very obviously artificial urban sites, often miles removed from any surviving semi-natural habitat, are repeating the unquestioning mantra - 'native is best'. So it's maybe a little misleading to say that herbaceous borders are frowned upon - there are still plenty around, go and have a look - but certainly when it comes to any provision for wildlife, the message is still very often the same: 'native is best'. And that is in the face of complaints from the public about the tatty look of the meadow in autumn, when flowering has finished and the man on the mower hasn't yet visited.

So those are the good bits; let's have a quick look at the parts I'm not so comfortable with.

Firstly, the headline: 'fad for wildflowers is ruining formal gardening'

Almost certainly journalist-speak, but not very helpful. For a start, it's hardly a fad - it's taken decades for conservationists to get planners and land managers to even think about wildflowers, so let's pray to God they continue, but in an informed way. And in my experience the wildflower bias doesn't affect formal gardening; I haven't come across any park manager insisting that his floral clock be made up of nothing but native species and I can't see it happening.

'Gardens are our nature reserves.'

Well, no, they're not really. They're gardens - that's the point. They can be fantastic or terrible for wildlife, depending on how they're managed, but they aren't a replacement for nature reserves and shouldn't be seen as such. And just as we should expect nature reserve managers to apply best current practice to the management of NNRs, so we should aim to encourage best practice in the garden. The Wildlife Gardening Forum is particularly good at disseminating research in this area.

'the art of cultivating species from around the world carefully managing their growth could die out.'

Hmmm... probably a statement that could only come from someone who's job title is Professor of Horticulture. After all, you've got to watch your back, haven't you?

Bee-friendly Plant of the Month - Onions

Plants of the onion family have spent millions of years evolving a cocktail of sulphur-based compounds designed to make them unpalatable to predators. These compounds, when released into the air, react with water to form a weak solution of sulphuric acid, hence their eyewatering reputation. Imagine their disappointment, then, when humans decided that this pungency was a desirable characteristic rather than a deterrent.

Since so many members of the genus Allium share this distinctive flavour and, as members of the Lily family, have attractive flowers, they have become popular garden plants both as vegetables and as ornamentals.  The Chive is one of the most familiar and is long established in cultivation; often said to have been introduced by the Romans, it is almost certainly native to parts of western and northern Britain, where it grows on limestone rocks and cliff faces.

There are several other species of wild onion, some native and some certainly introduced, but the majority are relatively scarce or downright rare, such as the Round-headed Leek found only on the rocks of the Avon Gorge. But one member of this distinctive family is both widespread and very obvious in the landscape.

Wild garlic - Allium ursinum - differs from its cousins in having a broad oval leaf, but one sniff is all that is needed to confirm its family affinities. Known variously as Ramsons, Devil’s Posy, Stinking Nanny and Gipsy’s Gibbles, this plant of damp woods and stream banks will, when happy, carpet huge areas with its fresh green leaves and star-like white flowers. The scent is so pungent that large colonies are almost always smelled before they are seen, but the flavour of the leaves is surprisingly mild and they have become a fashionable addition to salads and pasta sauces in up-market restaurants.

Sufficiently different to have been consigned to its own genus, Nectaroscordum siculum is an elegant architectural plant with nodding, bell-like flowers in shades of pink and gold. The foliage has a less pleasant smell than many of the onions, but the flowers have a honey scent and the abundant nectar they produce makes them very popular with bees.

Bee-friendly Plant of the Month - the Bluebell

The British flora, although small by global standards, is interesting for being a mixture of the floras of several northern temperate zones. In the north of England and the mountains of Scotland, an arctic-alpine flora found more widely across Scandinavia reaches its southernmost limit. In the extreme south of England, Mediterranean species such as the early spider orchid reach the northern edge of their range. But where the British Isles come into their own is in the case of the so called Lusitanian flora.

Named after ancient Portugal, this flora is made up of species that favour the mild, damp climate of the western European Atlantic seaboard. Many of the plant species characteristic of this flora are quite obscure; the strawberry tree of southern Ireland, the pale butterwort of West Country bogs. But one species is an icon of the British landscape. The native bluebell (not to be confused with the Scottish bluebell, which is a harebell!) is found from Spain and Portugal up through France and into Belgium and Holland. But nowhere other than the UK does it form the vast, glowing blue carpets familiar from our ancient woods. And ancient woodlands are the place to find it; a poor disperser, it rarely colonises new sites, instead lying dormant as seed in the soil or growing vegetatively in the shade until a gap in the canopy lets in light and triggers the spectacular display of mass flowering. It will even hang on for years in fields where woodland has been felled, a ghostly reminder of an historic landscape. 

The bluebell’s inability to colonise is something that is sadly not shared by its close cousin, the Spanish bluebell. This rather more robust plant, often grown in gardens, is a superlative escape artist, and is turning up with depressing regularity in the wild, often from dumped garden waste. More insidiously, its pollen is carried by bees and other insects which then fertilise native bluebells. The resulting hybrids then out-compete their pure-blood cousins, spreading their genetic influence ever wider. My advice would be to avoid it as a garden plant; it lacks a lot of the charm of the native species anyway.

Another threat to the native bluebell has been large-scale digging up of bulbs for sale, but it is now protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act and it is illegal to sell bulbs or seed of wild bluebells.

Our native bluebell has undergone several changes of scientific name as taxonomists wrestle with its place in the plant kingdom. It is closely related to the squills (Scilla), of which there are two species native to the British Isles. Like their larger relative, both Spring and Autumn squill are found along the west coast, usually in short, open turf on cliffs, where they can form carpets of violet-blue.

I have a Cunning Plan...

When I was working at the Millennium Seed Bank I was fortunate to be involved in a collaboration with Atlantic College. This international school is based at St Donat's Castle on the coast of the Vale of Glamorgan, and I visited a couple of times to talk to the students and carry out some seed collecting.

And I don't mind admitting I fell in love with the place. After all, what's not to like? A dramatic, well-preserved medieval castle; bright, motivated students; fantastic Tudor gardens; a dramatic stretch of coast full of fossils; woodland and grassland that form part of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast; warm and friendly staff; a modern arts centre; there are even two swimming pools!

St Donat's from space (courtesy of Google, obviously)

So impressed was I by the place that I felt I wanted to make a contribution to its future. Wonderful though it is, it could be so much more; the wild habitats have been unmanaged for years and the formal gardens - though still lovely - have suffered a degree of neglect. After much thought I came up with what has become known as - in the words of Baldric - the Cunning Plan.

My idea is to tie together all the things that make St Donat's so special in a project that is part renovation, part habitat management. There are two central themes:

The Tudor gardens

Having done a little research, it turns out that the gardens are even more interesting than I realised. They are given Grade I status in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales and Elisabeth Whittle, Inspector of Historic Parks and Gardens for Welsh Historic Monuments, had this to say about them: 'The wonderful situation and scale of these terraced Tudor gardens, their completeness and the lack of major alteration, give them special significance and value not only for Wales but also for Britain as a whole.'

Clearly the sympathetic renovation of these gardens has got to be a priority, and I'm currently researching lists of plants appropriate to an Elizabethan garden.

The Alton boys in the Beast Garden

Biodiversity

Although the nearby Site of Special Scientific Interest stops just short of the castle grounds, the habitats on the estate are still of importance. The woodland is mostly on slopes too steep to have been cultivated, and the clifftop grasslands are species-rich in places. Appropriate management of both these habitats would improve their wildlife value. Atlantic College has its own apiary and the students help to look after the bees; part of the Cunning Plan involves using pollinator-friendly planting to encourage not only the honey bees but also solitary bees, hoverflies, butterflies and a whole range of insect species.

So my aim is to have a series of zones radiating out from the Beast Garden - formal, then semi-formal with drifts of pollinator-friendly flowers, finally blending into the native habitats of woodland and grassland.

How the castle entrance might look

I have the go-ahead to produce a plan; all we need now is some funding...

Bee-friendly Plant of the Month - the Willow

Following on from last month’s plant, the crocus, March brings another good source of pollen for our bees, though a less showy one - the willow. And like the crocus, the willow has a long history of medicinal use. Though it is hard to imagine now, malaria was once a widespread disease in the British Isles, particularly in the damp, low-lying fens of East Anglia. In the guise of the ague or marsh fever, it claimed thousands of lives from the fifteenth century up until its eventual eradication in this country in the nineteenth century. A popular folk remedy for the ague was a bitter infusion of the bark of the willow, a common tree in the damp areas where malaria was prevalent. This was known to reduce the symptoms of malaria, particularly the associated fever. In the nineteenth century the active ingredient of this infusion, salicylic acid, was identified and from this acetyl salicylic acid - or aspirin - was eventually synthesised.

There are 18 species of Salix native to the British Isles, and they range in form from dwarf shrubs of the arctic-alpine highlands to woodland trees. Many of the commoner species are medium sized shrubs to small trees, and are particularly associated with wet ground and river banks. Their fluffy seeds are wind-dispersed and short-lived, relying on a successful touch-down on damp mud for germination. Their other method of propagation is to shed twigs and branches, which have a remarkable ability to take root. For that reason, never use willow for fence posts, or you will find your fence sprouting leaves.

Willows are also alarmingly promiscuous, cross-breeding readily to form a bewildering range of hybrids, a nightmare for the botanist. Amongst these hybrids and varieties are many commercially important forms, such as the osiers used for basket weaving and that English essential, the cricket bat willow. But in terms of early spring pollen production, it is Salix caprea, the goat or pussy willow, which is the real star. Goat willow can tolerate drier ground than many of its relatives, and as such is found in a wider range of habitats, including damp woodlands and hedgerows. It is the classic willow of Palm Sunday, producing its distinctive silvery catkins in time for Easter, though it bears almost no resemblance to the palms of the Holy Land.

But it is the male catkins, of course, that are of interest to the beekeeper. These start off with a sheen of silvery hairs, but soon the stamens open and each catkin becomes dusted with bright yellow pollen. Their resemblance to newly-hatched chicks has led to a number of local vernacular names, such as goose-and-goslings or the wonderful Shropshire variation, goose-and-gubblies.