TREESERVE 365 Newsletter #4

August 2023

Dear TreeServe365 Members,

Welcome to our TREESERVE 365 newsletter and thank you for being a supporter of the challenge to plant as many trees as we can in 365 days!

We hope this newsletter finds you well and your tree planting plans are progressing!

In this newsletter, we report on our July meeting where we were joined by Arborist Evander de Groot who shared his vast experience and common-sense approach to planting and caring for trees, and share news of what’s been going on at Treeserve365.

Our Mission
Life conserved through a planet reforested
Our Vision
A thriving planet for all life and future generations

So, what’s been happening at TREESERVE 365?

Behind the scenes we’ve been developing our website. Sincere thanks to David Floyd who has helped us to build our site and who has recently added a translation tool to make it more accessible to people from around the globe. 

David will be adding further pages to map and record the progress of Treeserve 365 and to share stories of trees planted by our community over the coming weeks and months.

Our gratitude goes to Sonia de Veiga for providing us with our first story and share her planting and permaculture activities in Portugal – so inspirational!

Thank you to all our wonderful guest speakers and attendees at our monthly meetings so far. We are learning so much from these events and the wisdom shared is appreciated.
It was fantastic to be joined by our guest expert, Evander de Groot from Melbourne, Australia in July.

Evander is an Arborist trainer and assessor, and while many would think of arborists as people who cut down trees, Evander has a passion for retaining trees and was keen to talk to us about the importance of trees in the urban environment (preaching to the converted!) 😉.

Evander covered so much ground in the hour we had available – from the legal protection of trees and how differing legislation between countries impacts trees, to the impact of the forest fires in Australia, and caring for trees in urban areas.

Our top ten takeaways (in no particular order):

• Plant large trees on the north side of your property (if you’re in the northern hemisphere) – you’ll be much less bothered about sunlight not getting through. This will prevent from needing to cut it later in life!
• BEWARE buying from nurseries as their practice is to give the predicted height of a tree based on its size at 7 years – it will grow A LOT bigger.
• PREVENT PATHOGENS FROM SPREADING (like Ash dieback) – diseased timber needs to be destroyed/taken out of the system, e.g. don’t use diseased chippings as mulch.
• Consider planting trees that can manage a hotter and drier environment – because of global warming. 🫤
• DONT DISTURB trees when anything is nesting in them – this helps to protect biodiversity.
• Rewilding – e.g. use owl and bird boxes to ENCOURAGE BIODIVERSITY.
• DON’T ‘TOP’ TREES – this can severely weaken them and make them prone to disease.
• EVERY CUT is a WOUND that the tree will need to heal. Too many wounds and the tree will not be able to recover.
• Root compaction can be an issue for mature trees in urban environments. Water-permeable asphalt, tree protection zones, and mulching roots can help. Cutting a tree’s roots will make it unstable.
• You can see a tree is having problems underground as the ends of the branches start to die.