Under Cover Tree Planter: Concealed Stash of Trees

Tree Stash

It is always good to keep things in one place, which is memorable, easy to spot in the dark and somewhere that no one goes. It saves panicking in the dark and spending a long time searching for lost trees and tools.
When I leave my stashed tree pile, for any length of time; I cover them over with grass and/or leaves or snow; to conceal them and to keep them from becoming dry.

Tonight's trees have been stashed underneath this young Spruce tree, which I planted 11 years ago.

Conifers in places

I do not normally plant non native species, but on this site there are huge clumps of Spirea, which have escaped from people's gardens and are marching across this site at an alarming rate, so I thought a neat little belt of Conifers, on that edge of the site. On the North facing side of the houses; should ought to halt the Spirea clumps in their tracks and then eventually smother them.

Tonight I added to this barrage with just a few more little conifers, but all the other trees in the bag were native and deciduous.

These types of Spruce are not like the invasive Maritime Pines, like you get along the South coast. These ones will not compete in a deciduous woodland and will be very unlikely to seed themselves here.

Planting Trees in the Snow

The Snow makes work a bit harder, but there isn't loads of it. In fact this is the first significant snow of this Winter. Very different from the last three unbearably freezing tree planting seasons, when snow covered the whole area for many months, sometimes over a metre deep.

This snow is melting rapidly and will probably be gone completely in a couple of days, if not later on this afternoon. I hope so, because I had planned to go out tree collecting.

Snow must be shovelled off the patches of ground, where the little trees are to be planted and then kicked back over again a bit, to hide the disturbed ground, after each one is done.

On this site I am planting tightly packed clumps of mixed small Willows and Birch, often two or three to a hole. I have found out through experimentation, that most species of tree, but most especially Birch; grow allot better in clumps. I am not sure why this is, but I now always try and group them together in clumps, leaving good spaces between these clumps, for people to comfortably walk around and between them.

I hope that I will complete this site before I move house, but if not; there are enough wild trees species to colonise the remaining bits naturally. To allow me to cut a few corners, I have left a few grassy open patches and added allot of suckering Blackthorns, which will spread out, with their underground rhizomes and extend the woods in whatever directions necessary.

Last Years Trees

Walking around here in the snow; I can spot just about all of my trees from last year, as the snow has flattened and obscured the grass and other vegetation, which normally camouflages them.

It is hard to believe that these have only been in a year; they have grown loads! Particularly trees which are often difficult to get started like the Oaks, which are doing extremely well.