Respect Shown by Water Board for my Trees

Leat Clogged Up

The two pictures, to the right; show how badly this section of the leat has become clogged up with weeds and water grasses.  This also collects lots of sediment & would require quite allot of digging out.

This has been my main concern, for a while, with this site.  Especially since earlier in the year, lots if mud from a similar clearance, was dumped on top of a load of my little trees (see 'regeneration' 7th October). 

Those trees did recover, but I had, until now; decided not to plant any more here, until after the leat had been cleared.

The Water Board, who are responsible for this thin strip of land along the leat; have told me off once, at lest seven years ago, for planting trees here.  Siting some red-tape/health & safety kind of make believe reason.


I didn't think that they cared too much for trees.

Today I was very pleasantly amazed to find, half the leat cleared and neatly placed around my trees, as a gardener would place Horse manure around some prize Rose bushes.


I get the feeling that its ok to resume tree planting on this site.

The last picture on this post is of one of my little places, where I like to sit and look at my trees and think of what they will be like in the future.

Under Cover Tree Planter

Stash for Today

Here are the trees I have stashed last night, for today's planting.

There is a good mixture of different native species, which I think will thrive up here, including many Birch and Oak + many different shrub trees, and heaps of Dog Roses , as seen here, with the green stems.

Each species or groups of species have been sorted into different bags, for easy recognition.
Hopefully these trees ought to do very well here. The site runs along the edge of the woods and is fairly undisturbed, most of the time.

Here a small, bushy little Alder is planted in a lovely boggy patch. 
You can see from how muddy my hands are; what the moisture content of the ground is like here.

Allot of the sites I have left up here to plant are along lanes and foot paths, here small Oaks and other trees are plonked here and there, in the hope that some will grow, so that when the Oaks appear to everyone else; they will appear to be fairly common widespread, over the whole area.

Fallen Tree Delays Guerrilla Activities

Guerrilla Gardening Activities were briefly delayed today and then work was forced to move onto a different site; as sheep and other farmyard animals were getting into the part of the woods that was scheduled to be planted, due to a fallen Beech Tree, which had fallen flat over the barbed wire fence and flattened it. Allowing all sorts farm creatures access to this part of the woods.


I guess that all I can do is notify the land owner and I cant plant any more wild trees in this small corner of the woods, until the fence is fixed.

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How Willows Spread Vegetatively

Willows can only grow so tall in saturated bog, before they topple over.
This is for the Willows; both a way of staying ever-youthful and one method of sending out clones of themselves in different directions.


But the reason that this tree was believed to contain the magical ability, for a user to be able to gain immortality, was because the tree is technically immortal its self. For when it falls over, it roots in and all the branches become independent trees in their own right.
It is probably due to this regenerative ability of the Willow tree, that it takes so easily from cuttings.


I have noticed that Alders root into the rotting branches of Willow. The Willow Crawls over the swamp and the Alder's are not often far behind them.
Willows are the swampy equivalent of a shrub tree, carrying the transition from wet grassland, through to wetland woods.

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Easy Willow Propagation.

Willow branches can be simply cut and trimmed and pushed into wet ground, where many will root and grow!

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Willow Cuttings

Quick Propagation
Willow trees will easily grow from cuttings, if not planted in the extremes of where they like to grow.  In other words; where the land is neither too boggy nor too dry in the growing season.


Willows really like the best of both worlds:

1. They need a constant supply of water, such as a river, bog or a permanently reachable water table that they can send roots down to.
2. They like some unsaturated, breathable soil.  With this, the roots can breathe and the whole plant grows better and faster.

The Willows that I have the highest success rate for and which have grown the fastest and biggest are always where I have planted them in the edge of a swamp.  Where their roots can easily penetrate both; the saturated swamp & the breathable earth.

Planting Willows in highly saturated, or in areas which will dry out in the Summer; will achieve greater success, if rooted, seed grown saplings are used, as willows will suit most sites, but cuttings will not survive if they can not reach saturated soil, nor if they cant breathe.


I have noticed that Willows (as well as many other plants, but to a much greater extent), when they topple over and root themselves further in to the swamp; seem to bring up whole chunks of ground, which then becomes breathable unsaturated little 'swamp islands, where all the swamp dwellers, including the Willows, can get a bit of dry.

Collecting 
Cuttings are more temperamental and less take, than with seed grow trees, but they are so much quicker and easier to collect, that many more can be planted and cuttings can usually be collected locally.


It is more difficult to get a good variety of willows, with this method, as many of the trees will be clones of the same mother plants.  It is good therefore to collect cuttings from as many trees as possible.


The cuttings must be long and straight enough to push about half a metre into the wet mud and also to be taller than the height of the summer vegetation on the site.


The thicker the branches used, the better they seen to grow.

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Regeneration

 Buried Trees

When I came down here earlier in the year; I was devastated to find that the water board, who owns the thin strip of land along side the leat, had repaired a ditch and just mindlessly dumped all the mud on top of allot of my little trees along just one side of it.

It would appear that the workmen had been briefed to be careful of the trees, as all the bigger ones had been left alone, but all the others, the bulk of them, had been buried under a thick layer of mud.

I haven't been able to face coming down here, from that day to this.  But I was very pleasantly surprised, when I came here today.

As you can see, if you look closely at the top and bottom pictures on this post; all of the trees, regardless of type have sprouted back up through the mud and in far greater quantity than they were before.  Thicker and faster, I think, they say.  So, naturally; I was very pleased.

Lots of places down here are becoming very like young woodland, forming a canopy, etc.  By the looks of thing's the little bit along this leat-side ditch will have caught back up with the neighbouring bits within a couple of years.