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UK faces tree shortage dilemma
The Government is funding new tree-seed nurseries to boost future tree supplies, as growers warn that gardeners face years of shortages due to soaring demand.
Tree retailers across Britain have told GW they expect supplies to be low again in the coming year, following acute shortages last season, when tree planting shot up by 40 per cent, with the Government piling on the pressure to increase planting to 30,000 hectares of new woodland each year by 2025. Last year, oak trees were particularly hard to find as gardeners and community groups also planted three million for the Queen’s Green Canopy, marking the Platinum Jubilee.
Mike Glover, managing director of Barcham Trees, tells us he has already sold out of more popular garden trees such as amelanchier – and this year’s planting season has hardly started. “We can’t grow them quickly enough,” he says. “Everyone is short on trees.”
Simon Scarth, director of Chew Valley Trees, reckons demand for trees has doubled in the past five years. He says trees that can’t be imported to top up supplies because of pest and disease concerns, such as pine and oak, are likely to be “almost impossible” to get hold of. And, he adds, it’ll take years to grow enough extra stock to make up the shortfall. “Smaller trees and whips you can turn around in two years, but anything bigger you’re looking at more than five years. There is no quick fix.”
In an effort to bump up homegrown tree production, the Government is pumping almost £750,000 into new high-quality tree-seed orchards, supplying seeds to tree nurseries for raising homegrown saplings. As well as landmark tree species such as oak, hornbeam and beech, the money will help to plant new seed orchards for smaller trees too. The Future Trees Trust is using seeds from Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank to grow new stocks of blackthorn, while the Woodland Trust is identifying new seed sources for good-quality hazel and holly, as well as service tree (Sorbus terminalis), known for its resilience to climate change.
Jo Clark, of the Future Trees Trust, says, “We need to deliver tens of thousands of hectares of woodland – but at the moment the industry just isn’t geared up to supplying that number of trees.” In partnership with the Earth Trust, she is helping to establish an orchard of oak trees at Sotterley Estate in Suffolk
