Too much staked on trees
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The received wisdom is that new trees, when planted, must be staked and, ideally, offered tree guards. This practice is more-or-less universal, but it leads one to ask the question – how did these poor, feeble trees propagate themselves before stakes and tree-guards were devised?
The answer, of course, is ‘perfectly well’. The natural way for trees to reproduce is usually for a host of seeds to be produced, the majority of which perish or are eaten. From the remainder, a great many seedlings germinate, most of which die. The few survivors might go on to become trees. After all, they can afford to lose a lot: if an oak tree produces only one viable child tree in 500 years, that will be enough to keep the species going. So if every single acorn dies for a century, that’s not necessarily a problem. The difference is that we humans are an impatient lot. If we plant a tree, we want to be sure that a tree will be there, growing dutifully when we come round a few years later. We also like to yank trees out of the ground when they are a year or two old, so we can carry them about. So when they get planted – usually in some exposed place away from the natural woodland undergrowth that they would normally find themselves in – it’s hardly surprising that they have a tendency to fall over. For these reasons, amongst others, the usual way to plant trees is with stake and tree guard. But it’s not the only way. It’s perfectly possible to plant trees from seed – or, better still, just leave them to grow by themselves. The trouble with this is that it can take a lot longer to get a result that humans will enjoy, and in the case of natural regeneration you can’t predetermine the kind of trees you will get. So we impatient, control-hungry people are less comfortable with these methods. But if people do have patience, this can be a great way to get trees that are strong and suitable for the location they are growing in: by using the way that trees naturally do it. Once established about the only thing you need to do by way of intervention (on the mainland, anyway) is to keep deer away from them for a while, by a fence. Once the trees are big enough this can be removed. The Ranger, when young and keen, was involved with the reinstatement of an old landfill site near Southampton in the late 1980s. A muddy landscape devoid of any vegetation at all was the prospect. Grassy areas were to be interspersed with planted blocks of trees. An earlier phase of stake-and-guard tree planting had been fairly unsuccessful as it had suffered from vandalism and fires, and poor growth on the very thin soil. So the new site was divided up. Some parts had traditional tree blocks with staked trees surrounded by fences, whilst others had a radical new idea used – ‘seeds’. It was cheaper, but old timers tapped their heads knowingly – those seeds? It’ll never work. Crazy voodoo – what will they think of next? Certianly for the first few years the results were not promising. But the passage of time has proved direct seeding to be as successful as plants. Today you can see the success of this project twenty years on by looking at Google Maps; or indeed by visiting the site, which I heartily recommend. The original, traditional tree blocks were on the left-hard side. The new, seeded blocks were mostly on the right. All the protective fencing is now gone. You can see that they have done very well. The original older blocks to the west are still a bit ragged by comparison. Indeed when I visited the site myself a couple of years ago I could not tell on the ground which had been the seeded block and which had been the planted ones. It’s just a shame that I didn’t think to make some natural regeneration exclosures so we could have compared that method, too.
So, if you’re contemplating planting some trees this winter, then ask yourself whether you’ve got the patience to trust the trees to sort themselves out for you. And one more thing – if you must stake your trees, don’t forget to take the stakes out, will you? It’s too late for this willow (see picture above), and actually, it probably never needed a stake in the first place.
I stopped using tree guards and stakes in urban areas about 3 years ago and saw a real drop in failure rates.
It mostly seemed to be due to a decrease in vandalism and theft (I jest you not)
What a pity about the willow. I keep meaning to take you pictures of our tree-growing adventures here. A maple we rescued from an excavated garden area when it was about a foot tall is now perhaps 8 feet tall, and two little mimosa trees salvaged as tiny things of perhaps six inches in height. Do mimosas grow there? Most people don’t care for them, but I enjoy their pink, fluffy blossoms. They’re commonly considered a “trash tree” here, as the saying goes. But I have a hard time thinking of any tree as “trash.”