Heritage oaks for the Queen’s jubilee Aveland Trees is a local tree nursery certified by the Woodland Trust. Kate met owner Hugh Dorrington to discover what he’s doing for the QGC
O
N THE OUTSKIRTS of Dunsby, a village north of Bourne, Hugh Dorrington and his son Joe run a specialist nursery growing native trees and shrubs for woodland and hedgerow planting schemes throughout the East Midlands. His customers are typically landowners and farmers who want to create broadleaved woodlands of oak, ash, elm, birch, lime and other native trees. The nursery also sells Heritage Oak saplings to the public grown from acorns collected from historically significant oak woods and individual trees. I asked Hugh why the Woodland Trust chose his nursery as a preferred supplier. ‘We collect all our seed from local sources and the Woodland Trust like that. We’re one of only a few tree nurseries that collect their own seed from woods and hedgerows that we’ve often planted ourselves. Other seed is collected from the local countryside having got permission from the landowners. We grow the saplings here on the nursery and then sell them on for various planting schemes. ‘This way we all know what we’re getting, as the plants are so local and we’re able to locate disease resistant specimens. We’ve succeeded in growing ash that isn’t susceptible to ash dieback disease and elms resistant to Dutch elm disease. We grow about 150,000 plants per year.
‘For the Queen’s Green Canopy we are supplying oaks grown from acorns from the Bowthorpe oak near Bourne which is the oldest and largest girthed oak in Britain. We collected about 4,000 acorns in September 2020 and grew them over 2021. We potted them into a non-peat based compost made from coir in spring 2022. They will be ready to sell in late summer/autumn 2022. You can buy them through our website www.heritageoaks.co.uk. People can collect the oaks directly from Aveland Trees or we’ll send them out in the post. If you are visiting the Bowthorpe Oak you can also buy them there.’ Hugh showed me around the nursery pointing out the trays of young saplings and the sand pits with rows of small trees ready to line out in the fields. t s quite back breaking work, but it’s very satisfying,’ he told me. ‘Trees naturally adapt to bad weather so we don’t worry about them as we line them out in the field for growing on. t s us on the tractor and the planting machine that need to worry about the wind and rain!’ He showed me plants collected from seed from the Burghley estate. ‘These have a direct lineage to oaks planted by Capability Brown and William Cecil. We’ve also got oak
‘‘For the Queen’s Green Canopy we are supplying oaks grown from acorns from the Bowthorpe oak near Bourne which is the oldest and largest girthed oak in Britain.’
20 May 2022 / theactivemag.com
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