Liberate Some Trees From Your Garden Lawn!
All around you are trees that are doomed to die before their first adult leaf - but you can help them!
Basically, last autumn, loads of seeds fell from trees as part of the natural cycle of things – and many of them will grow for ever and become great adult trees. Some in churchyards, some in woodlands, along a river or around the edges of a field.
But those that have fallen in your lawn and have spent all winter growing roots and hiding under the snow, could well be doomed when you get out your lawn mower for the first time this spring!
Baby Trees:
All around you outside you should be able to find these baby trees really easily, as they nearly all grow identical first leaves (see picture). These first leaves look absolutely nothing like the mature tree leaves, so you won’t know what they are unless the seed casing is still attached.
This way – it is even more exciting to save them as you will have to wait a while to find out what trees you have actually saved!
Some trees have obvious seed cases, like the one’s I found that were still in their sweet chestnut casing, and others I have found were still in their little ‘winged’ cases, but generally, you can only guess at.
Birds carry a lot of seeds inside their guts after berry eating in the winter, and can drop them well away from the adult tree or bush. And yet other seeds can sit in the ground waiting to germinate for up to 2 or even 3 years – so before they start to grow they could have been dug up and moved to a completely new garden without you knowing about it!
Why Save Them?
Well, we all know that planting trees is great for the planet, so instead of buying trees from a garden center or specialist – why not just help the ones in your own garden to grow naturally.
Not only is this free (yippee!), but it is great fun AND it will help wildlife to be attracted to your garden or local woods.
So, you need to make sure that you move these little trees out of the path of the lawn mower and take them to somewhere where they can grow safely. Don’t forget that trees take years to grow to any noticeable size, so they aren’t going to over run your garden - unless you wait about 30 years!
And, they aren’t all going to survive anyway as deer might eat them or whatever, so don’t worry about about planting them close together if it’s easier for you and depending on where you can move them to.
They won’t need looking after at all once moved – and all of mine from last spring survived sitting under thick snow for 2 months solid over the winter and are all doing fine this spring!
So, get out there and get digging!
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