Just returned from a thought provoking course run by the National Trust at Hatfield Forest. Tree Veteranisation (which you ATF bods will know anyway) aims to create some of the characteristics found in veteran trees on ‘boring’ younger trees or to hasten their recruitment into the ‘interesting’ (in ecological terms) category. This process attempts to create some continuity between our declining veteran and ancient tree population and those trees which are future veterans.

The course covered the use of explosives to remove limbs or tops while creating interesting fractures, and the use of various methods to mimic veteran tree features such as cavities, torn branches, woodpecker holes, deadwood etc etc.

It was interesting to see examples from both the UK and abroad (notably Spain) of what most TO’s would see as poor quality tree work or wilful damage. These techniques are producing desirable cavities, deadwood, decay etc and hastening these trees towards recruitment as future veterans. It’s certainly made me look again at some of the examples of ‘poor’ work in a different light.

Thats’ not to say that I’ll be applying a sledgehammer to Mrs Miggins’ Lime on the High street or going back to 1970s style flush cuts on our TPO trees!

However I will be looking out for the right trees/locations to bridge this important gap.

One of the most telling statistics was that of you take a population of 1000 veteran trees with an average rate of decline 1-2% then in 100 years that population will have dwindled to just 200. Think on MTOAers.

Regards

Gareth