The year began with a scion collection campaign across the country in the grip of a dark winter. Future Trees Trust Researcher, James Macintyre (and more importantly, data manager) and Sam Carroll (former Patsy Wood Scholar) set off with teams of climbers to collect grafting material from newly selected plus trees, from Cumbria to Hampshire. We collected from oak, beech and cherry. The collected plants have been grafted and are growing on in the nursery.
As well as scion collection for grafting new plants for the future, it was a very busy winter for planting previously grafted plants. Looking out of the window, this was going to be a wet year for planting; we were prepared. The mammoth undertaking was to get two archives of resistant ash material planted. This work was planned for this winter 2025, however the grafts in the nursery had grown so successfully that we had no option but to get them in the ground immediately. This was a logistical pain in the nether regions. After a couple of weeks of packing 2500 trees onto 14 pallets (more work than it sounds!). They were ready to be dispatched to the site.
The Hampshire ash archive site was first (as Scottish planting season is a little longer than down south). We had up to 6 tree planters on site while the Future Trees Trust researchers removed the pots and wrestled with the roots to not have each tree planted totally pot bound. Jo went through after each tree was planted and did the most important job of mapping all the trees. After this, at two sites, we now have two perfectly mapped archive sites of resistant ash trees, with 6 clones of each, so if anything happened to any, we would have backups.
Building a research site for the future was a milestone achievement for us this year.
As well as the ash archives, we celebrated planting our first oak seed orchard trees on our fledgling research site at Craven Field near Uffington in Oxfordshire. Little did we know what was to come.
A short trip to the Netherlands to discuss grafting techniques with a master grafter, I found myself in Amsterdam visiting a friend. To my delight, a long grey winter (apparently, one of the highest rainfall totals in an 18-month period in the UK) seemed to be over in a matter of days. The sun was out in Amsterdam, and the dingy dark felt a distant memory. However, 10th of March signaled the end of the rain. This sounds like hyperbole, and it may be. I am talking about the amounts and frequency of rain that newly planted trees need. It became apparent by the end of April and getting into May we were going to have to do something about our planted trees. We could not let over 10 years of work go to waste in one long hot summer.
We thought surely there was rain coming, yet every week the forecast would promise a little and we would get less. This went on and on. Across the country people were delighted, this is the kind of weather everyone loves, sunny and warm, what’s not to like. As the side of the pool and cocktails began to look more and more appealing, we had sprung into action. A 2000 litre bowser was purchased; we brushed up on our offroad trailer skills, and we were away. The site is not local to any of our team, about an hour and a half for our closest researcher, but we met up and went down to water. We collected the water from the Micheldever yard, prepared by the Forestry England southern district team. They were a great help. The archive is on the public forest estate, and they aided us in any way they could, while dealing with forest fire threats of their own!
First, we were using buckets, as there had not been time to properly arm ourselves with the necessary kit. Then, with a generator and some submersible pumps, we upped the ante. On a good day we would put 4000 litres of water on the trees, these were long days, and we were using all the light we could. Back at the Craven Field research woodland, we had a dedicated team of waterers who went out to water our new seed orchards twice a week! One half of the dedicated team paid the price – with his body and has recently received a new hip. I think he would agree that it was totally worth it. In fact, this was our very own CEO, mucking in to get the job done.
For a brief week I was able to not think too hard about the thirsty trees as Jo and I were fortunate enough to get the opportunity to go to the IUFRO conference on forest pathology in Vernon, BC. This was a great gathering of forest researchers from across the world with all 6 forested continents represented. We learnt so much and this may go a long way to inform what I did next at Future Trees Trust (more to come on that).
Not long after we returned from Canada, Penfolds, the planting contractor, were given confirmation they were to take over watering duties. This eased the burden on the team to finally focus on other things. Penfolds did a great job and after the brutal summer we are pleased to say survival in the southern ash archive was over 95%, with us losing just 20 trees to drought. Our Head of Research, Jo Clark made like Bilbo Baggins and thought ‘I think I’m quite ready for another adventure’. She took a well-deserved 10-week break and went on an amazing trip across Europe to Montenegro.
With time freed up, it was down to James and me to answer the call from the Forestry Commission and provide proposals for the new Seed Sourcing Grant. We worked through the summer on these and are proud to say this paid off as we have been successful with three proposals:
1. Continue work with beech – and aim to bring some southerly provenances from the near continent into our seed orchards, including oak.
2. Wild Service project to establish a seed orchard
3. Manage a Coast redwood seed stand in Herefordshire – a move away from our usual broadleaf territory, but still in the realms of what we know.
Year Two of Complex Trials
Following the awarding of the grants we started work on our other projects. Our Supersizing Broadleaves project, funded by the Forestry Commission’s Tree Production Innovation Fund (TPIF). This is the continuation of work on three trials established in winter 2023-24. We entered year 2, so it was time to dig-up trees, from 48 different treatments from three sites. A bizarre thing to do one may think, but in fact it was useful, and may prove groundbreaking (pardon the pun).
These dug up trees will be analyzed by Silviculturist Ted Wilson and his team in Penrith where they will analyze the root architecture, looking at various metrics. Answering questions like, ‘is it best to plant bare root or cell grown trees on X type of soil, and does it vary with species?’. The fact that the trial design is so complex means there are many questions that may be answered.
It has been a wonderful year at Future Trees Trust, as always very busy, but rewarding stuff. Here’s to some summer rain!
