plant more trees!

Short video from the copse at snowdrop time-mid February. Copse is short for coppice, which is usually taken to mean a small wood, but more accurately refers to the ancient craft of coppicing, which is to cut down a deciduous tree, taking a renewable harvest of wood-deciduous trees like hazel, ash, oak, willow and others will sent up new shoots from the base. The most typical tree which is coppiced is hazel, examples of which are seen here. Don't try coppicing before reading it up, it won't work with evergreens or birch and of course gives you many smaller growths rather than one big trunk, but it has a great deal to be said for it in terms of material for firewood, wood for tool handles, basket making. I'll look at basket willow later.

All of the trees in our coppice were plabnted for specific reasons of utility and beauty. The main point of this short vid is to show how large trees like birch, hazel, cherry etc can grow during your adult life-its way worth planting noble woodland trees like this, should you have access to some land not being used for food production, if only for the sense of personal achievement. We were in our late thirties when we planted all these trees, now we are in our early firties and they look great, BUT even if we were making a new start now, given an average life expectancy (only the Lord knows how long any of us has) we could expect to get from zero to trees this size by the time we were 70, which isn't that old these days in Europe or the US. So don't be put off planting trees because you thnk you;ll never live to see them in their mature beauty. Anyway, that's no excuse-think of those who may come after you!.


I don't want to argue one way or the other about man made global warming/climate change, beyond saying that it MIGHT be true and in any case planting trees to trap carbon and produce oxygen for the health of the environment as well as renewable energy and other purposes must be the right thing to do. Oh, and then there's beauty.....

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• copse
• coppice
• birch
• hazel
• oak
• cherry
• tree
• wood
• woodland
• fruitwise
• durley
• hampshire

[byronlegend]

Great video.

I have a question. Can I take a piece of young hazel from the woods and plant it in my garden by simply sticking it in the ground as you can do with willow? I have local woods nearby and would like to plant some hazel in my large garden. Or can you only grow them from the hazelnut. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[stephenhayesuk]

@byronlegend I'm not sure. All the hazel plants I have grown either came up themselves from squirrel planted nuts or were bought from a nursery, where they do grow them from nuts. You could try to strike from cuttings, nothing to lose, but you would do better to try to dug up a sucker with some roots.

You can also layer, that is pull down a slim young growth and peg it to the soil until it roots. In fact, I will attempt to demonstrate this technique with some hazel nuts in the orchard

[gabrielsdescention]

hi stephen, really interesting about the Hazel.Whats your view on the hybrid willows?Im thinking about planting a few as a windbreak,firewood source and materials for possible hurdles.I know they're supposedly short lived but the speed of growth seems useful.

[stephenhayesuk]

Hi Gabriel

Willow is remarkable. Uses I know of include cricket bats, split wood (trug) baskets, woven baskets, hurdles, living sculptures, biomass energy generation and probably a few others.

My Julia has just been on a day course on living willow structures in Westonzoyland, Somerset. For information Google on Musgrove + willow

We planted several varieties including white willow (salix alba) and Bowles green hybrid. Salix alba grew fastest by far.

Will post more on willow later

[5043ellis]

Hi Stephen great uploads as usual.

I want to plant a couple of apple trees to cross pollinate the breaburn and cox's orange pippin I already have. Could you suggest any please, you can possibly guess my taste in apple by the two i already have though I would not dismiss a cooking apple.

[stephenhayesuk]

Difficult question! Only you can decide

Egremont Russet is a great all round good choice. Laxton's Epicure is well flavoured and reliable early apple which will be ripe and eaten before any of the others are ripe, and Winston (Winter King) is a good very late keeping variety which will also extend your season.

I posted a number of videos on apple varieties to offer the information to help people choose, but I can't say what you should plant.

[MsJose809]

Q.Q I dnt blame nature for blowing houses away just as FK ppl cut the trees if a huracan hapens dnt get mad >.< if u cut trees or hurt nature -_-

[byronlegend]

@stephenhayesuk Thanks for that. I bought home some small saplings and planted them directly into the garden. I shaved off some of the bark from the bottom to expose some green wood to the soil. I have no idea if this will work but it will be an interesting experiment. They have been in the ground for 48 hours and haven`t wilted yet.

[Sionnach1601]

Good man Stephen. Fair play to you.

It's great to see people selflessly doing things like this for the world and for everyone & everything in it.

It's marvellous to see that it's hardwoods that you're planting too - not only more aesthetic, but all the wildlife they support underneath.

I really salute you for doing this, & for spreading the word by videoing it.

Good on ya mate!

[YourGardenShow]

Love seeing those snowdrops, a sure sign of spring coming. Beautiful coppice. Plant more trees! Yes please!