Thursday 16 October 2014

The trees have arrived

This time of the year is always a momentous one at Wildwood - the arrival of the trees for winter planting!

This year the volunteers have 6,045 trees to plant around the site and were delivered to us by Alba trees. Alba is a company we have been working with for many years. When the volunteers collect the seed, this is given to Alba to grow on for trees which we then plant on site. All the seed is collected from sites that are nearby which gives it strong local provenance to Carrifran.

Once the trees were delivered (to our shiny new tree pen no less), the sorting began! 


Volunteers making our new tree pen 
The finished product!
Sorting the new delivery
And we're all ready to go!
We have 3 compartments that we have prepared for planting with spot spraying (see previous blog post Preparation for the Winter) and over 4,000 trees will go into these. We also have a number of other areas around the site where we will plant the rest.

So what's going in this year (drum roll please)

Sessile Oak (Quercus petraea)
Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)
Alder (Alnus glutinosa)
Downy birch (Betula pubescens)
Downy willow (Salix lapponum)
Grey willow (Salix cinerea)
Dark leaved willow (Salix myrsinifolia)

We then spent the next day delivering the trees to the first of the compartments to be planted this season. It was a misty drive up on the quad bikes but glad to say the trees were safely delivered. 

Bikes with the first load ready
Top of Carrifran Gans. Now where was that tree drop point......
And as we made the drop the clouds lifted and the view down into they valley below was magical.

Towards Talla and Gameshope
As ever the volunteers will have another busy planting season ahead - I think they are rather looking forward to it though....

Lynn
Site Officer

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