Feed Your Trees a Little TLC

Tree campaigning partnership The Tree Council is urging everyone who has planted trees in the last five years to revisit them in early spring and give them some vital aftercare. The ideal time for this tender loving care (TLC) is March or April.

Thousands of young trees, planted with care, expense and enthusiasm, die each year from the lack of just a few minutes of TLC. So time, money and effort are wasted.

That’s why The Tree Council launched its 2005 Trees Love Care (TLC) campaign during the weekend of 19/20 March.

The idea was that many of its 7,500 volunteer Tree Wardens and others who have planted trees — during this winter’s planting season or in recent years — would choose a time around that weekend to go back and check on their young trees.

With the help of the Tree Advice Trust, one of its 150 member organisations, The Tree Council has come up with a few simple tips for TLC —

• Tending, such as checking guards and carrying out careful pruning,
• Loosening ties and checking stakes, and
• Clearing grass and weeds from around the tree’s base and applying mulches

The Woodland Trust (also a member) is working with The Tree Council to promote the importance of TLC through its Tree For All initiative.

Explains Tree Council Campaigns Director Kevin Hand, “Planting trees is one of the most rewarding things anyone can do for the environment. It helps to ensure that a very important part of our heritage thrives. But if we want young trees to survive and mature, we need to nurture and cherish them in those important early years.

“Because research suggests that at least one in three of all young trees dies from lack of care within the first five years — and in some planting projects, the loss is over 90 per cent — The Tree Council and its member organisations are stressing the importance of TLC. We are asking people to return at least once a year between March and September to any trees they have recently planted. They can then carry out a few easy tasks that will help many more trees to survive those crucial early years.”

For more information on TLC visit The Tree Council website: www.treecouncil.org.uk or write for a free poster (available from February), giving illustrated tips, to TLC, The Tree Council, 71 Newcomen Street, London SE1 1YT, enclosing a large stamped addressed envelope.

Tree Dieback a Reviver

We've had a particularly dry few years, and the street trees - mainly mature tall trees of many species - are beginning to show the effects.

While householders generally have ensured the survival of trees within their property boundaries in spite of the water restrictions, the street trees have been left to their own devices.

And perhaps 20% have faltered.

Increasingly, as the drought stretches into years, they are succumbing. Brown and dead, they are a pitiful sight. And the neighborhood is much worse off for their passing.

Every here and there, however, some home-owners are taking a stand. It seems to particularly apply to folk who live near open spaces, where there is open land between them and the road.

A pleasing number have begun their own replanting programs. Little clusters of trees are appeearing, well-staked, mulched and with wetting agent applied.

Clustered, they are better suited to economic use of grey-water. Once established, the thickets may be expanded.

And hopefully, somewhere along the way, the rains will come again, and they will thrive.

These thoughtful actions now will then do us proud.

Child Care Hammocks Sensational

Backyard tranquility is one of the assets of a tree - or, more often, a pair of trees!

With spring comes the desire to start fresh and clean house of all that is stressful.

It is the season for lying back and compiling a plan for bringing elements of comfort into your life starting with the great outdoors . . . your backyard.

The number one element of comfort when beginning in the outdoors is a hammock. This crafted item has been created with the sole purpose of providing comfort.

But, a hammock is just a start.

From there, many other elements of comfort come into play including scent, touch, motion, as well as personal and natural comforts. Think child care hammocks ...