Looking outside, the hot weather and green leaves show that spring has truly arrived, and I find this a good time to reflect on the work I’ve been involved with since I began working for Future Trees Trust last September. If you don’t know me already, my name is James, and I’m a researcher at the Trust. This winter I’ve been involved with a massive range of activities. I’m going to recap these here and hopefully give an insight into the work we’ve been doing in the past 8 months.
My start at Future Trees Trust was great fun, with my first weeks mainly spent learning the ropes of ‘plus tree’ selection which involves searching through woodlands for trees with excellent form, size, and health.
This has been one of my favorite activities with the Trust so far—and also one of the most important—since the trees selected at this stage will contribute to the genetics of our seed orchards for decades to come.
A highlight of ‘plus tree’ selection was a week spent in the Lake District with this year’s Patsy Wood Scholar Sam Carroll. We visited several sites across the lake district selecting beech and wild cherry, one of the sites we visited on this trip was the Lowther Estate where I saw some of the most impressive broadleaf trees. It was also great to revisit these trees later in the winter for scion collection, but more on that later!
A large portion of the winter was spent with the whole research team measuring our silver birch and sycamore progeny trials which were planted in 2023. This work assesses the performance of different ‘plus tree’ families and is essential to test the heritability of characteristics identified in the original plus trees.
These trials also allow us to remove the families which consistently perform badly across different environments from seed orchards, meaning the seed produced would fall in the highest category of forest reproductive material (tested). We also measured our Supersizing Broadleaves trials this winter and got some very beautiful weather for it!
I find the fieldwork at Future Trees Trust very fulfilling, it feels great to work outside and visit locations all across the UK whilst also contributing to our research projects. The data collected in the winter goes into forming a basis for the years’ reports, one of which I had the opportunity to write. For this years silver birch (Betula pendula) progeny trial report I analysed height and growth data from almost 8,000 trees across five sites, created summary tables, and compiled updates on management and conditions at each site.
Our findings showed that the Scottish sites were performing much better, with our trial at the Bolfracks estate having a mean height of 175 cm, this is very impressive compared to our research woodland site at Craven Field which had a mean height of 60 cm. This poor growth is thought to be due to soil conditions. Writing this report was a great experience for me, and I had the opportunity to present the findings at the Birch Group annual meeting.
As the winter came to a close we came together as a team to complete a very large piece of work, the planting of almost 5,000 grafted ash (Fraxinus excelsior) trees in the existing national archive of tolerant ash, and in a new tolerant ash archive in Scotland.
This was an immense piece of work which was moved forward one year due to unexpectedly high growth of the trees in the nursery, and it required a week of planting at each of the sites. The planting went very well at both sites, and will hopefully be a big step towards a future where ash is back in the UK landscape. I am really looking forward to seeing how the site develops over the coming years with the rest of the Living Ash Project.
I also got to speak about the Supersizing Broadleaves project at the ‘Future of Ash’, 2025 Future Trees Trust, Annual Supporters’ Day at the National Trust Buscot and Coleshill Estate. It was great to catch up with colleagues, partners and supporters’. You can read all the updates from the event in our annual report.
Now looking forward to the year ahead, it seems to be posing a new set of challenges. The driest spring on record has meant watering our new plantings to keep them alive, and new Seed Sourcing and Tree Production Innovation Fund grants mean that we are very busy planning and writing proposals. There is certainly plenty to do, but I’m looking forward to getting stuck into it with the team. Overall, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time, I’m very privileged to be part of this important work. I’m very excited to see what is in store for me and the team for the rest of 2025!
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