National Gardens' manager leads the call for more trees

Monday, January 22 2007 12:38:38 by Editor

Stephen Anderton, National Gardens' manager for English Heritage and writer for the Times newspaper,is heading a call for more trees to be planted in urban gardens.

He suggests that many homeowners are wary of planting trees in their relatively small back gardens because of paranoia about "subsidence and shade and trees sucking the 'goodness' out of the soil and leaves 'making work' and street trees dropping 'bits' on to cars".

Instead, urban homeowners should concentrate on the positives of planting a tree in their garden, including the fact that a tree provides shade, garden colour and a much-needed urban eco-system for the thousands of animals that inhabit our cities.

"We have more than 300 species of large moth in the UK (far more than pretty butterflies) and their caterpillars, in bulk, are what the hungry blue tit needs," writes Mr Anderton in the Times.

"And in the branches of any tree there is refuge too, from many kinds of predators, not least cats. Trees - average, ordinary trees - can do all that."

Having a small garden simply isn't an excuse anymore as far as Mr Anderton is concerned, since there is such a wide variety of trees in all shapes and sizes – meaning that there is one to suit every back yard.

Good, small trees suitable for an urban garden include a whole range of thorns, including the common hawthorn, the double white thorn and the grey leaved thorn, or perhaps, space allowing, a wild pear tree.

For those who prefer less thorny trees, Mr Anderton recommends crab apple trees, silver birches and evergreen trees like the Arbutus with its dangling strawberry-like fruits and the Azara serrata and microphylla, which boast sweetly-scented flowers.

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