A Weekend for Woodlands – Planting Trees

Much of the weekend was spent creating what will hopefully become a little woodland thanks to a whole load of free trees. Well, it’ll be more of an unruly hedge than a woodland if we’re honest.

Free Trees

Thanks to the Make Room for Nature scheme run by the Woodlands Trust Cymru we had 40 hawthorn saplings to plant. This involved a fair bit of clearing and preparation first which kept us busy on Saturday. The area was fairly overgrown and had been used as a dumping ground for garden cuttings and larger bits of garden waste for a while. It didn’t look terrible, but it required quite a bit of work to get it into a state fit for planting.

Morgan even came out into the garden to help feed the fire for a while.

Sunday morning was then spent moving compost, planting, staking and mulching the trees. There were a few that weren’t hawthorn that we planted in amongst the others but the majority were native hawthorn trees.

Hopefully, they’ll settle in well and put on some growth this year. Then, in a few years’ time, they should start serving a purpose. The plan is that they’ll provide shelter from the wind for us and the other plants in the garden. They’ll provide shelter for wildlife and nesting birds. Being all native plants they should provide food for caterpillars and other invertebrates, increasing biodiversity and helping to ‘give nature a home’. 

Hopefully, the fact that they are hawthorn means that their blossom will provide nectar for our bees too. It’ll take a while of course but we have to start somewhere. They might end up obscuring the view a little but we can live with that if it helps the wildlife and gives us some shelter.

Elsewhere in the garden things are still relatively quiet. There are some signs of life here and there and the bees are flying, so I did a quick inspection and feed. There are also signs of a few things that have succumbed to the cold winter temperatures and winds.

It’s going to be a busy Spring for me.

Tags: GardenGardening