Moving from planting to growing new trees, with the Tree Council's Sara Lom

HortWeek Podcast

Trees, arguably, have never been so popular and Sarah Lom, chief executive of the Tree Council is enjoying their moment in the sun.

Applications to the Tree Council's small grants fund [under £500] have doubled in the last 12 months. National Tree Week at the end of 2023 reached an estimated 30 million people and a schools programme is helping engage younger people, helping ease their 'eco-anxiety' along the way:

"We even got to deliver a lesson at Number 10 [Downing Street] ...which was a fabulous opportunity for the pupils to see the garden there, the beautiful London plane trees."

Tree Council relies upon a network of volunteer tree wardens around the UK, has a £2m program funding108 different projects with Network Rail.

The organisation encourages community groups to use local or their own nurseries for a supply of "bio-secure trees". And this community activity may have more benefits than one might imagine:

"There is evidence that trees planted with love and care do better. We're five years into a hedge planting trial with Network Rail at Hadley Wood in North London...and five years in, the hedges planted by the volunteers are four meters tall and have 96% survival rate, whereas those planted by the contractors are two meters tall - that's half - and a 64% survival rate," all of which is a boon to the well-documented benefits of trees - pollution mitigation, urban cooling, flood mitigation, well-being uplift and so on. A full report on the findings is to be produced in due course.

But climate change and changes to previously dependable seasonal patterns has led her to wonder whether National Tree Week (which encourages people to plant trees in their communities), shoudl be made later.

"The warmer autumns means the trees become dormant later, the early spring brings them back to life sooner."

As concern grows over the UK's ability to meet Government tree planting targets, Lom says: "They didn't meet their targets, but the good news is that the nation did plant 40% more trees last season than they did the season before. And the aim is that will escalate year on year on year, but it takes time and everyone has to play their part. I know when I've spoken to nursery, they've said, we need time to be able to generate the stock."

As local authorities wrestle with extreme pressure on council budgets Lom insists that having a tree strategy should be a priority:

On plans for 2024 Lom says the schools programme will continue, tree survival studies and work with DEFRA looking at establishing a methodology for tree survival and tree establishment will all figure.

Tree Council is also collaborating with Oxford University on a mistletoe mapping project, a keystone species with complex interactions with trees.

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