With just a few months to go before work begins on the rebuilding of Botanic Cottage in the Demonstration Garden, site preparations are now beginning so that we are ready for the arrival of the specialist team who will reconstruct this historic house. As part of the enabling works, we will be removing some trees and installing tree protection fencing to ensure the trees we wish to retain are not damaged during the development. William Hinchliffe, Senior Horticulturalist, says:
“The objective is to achieve a harmonious relationship between the surrounding trees and the cottage that can be sustained in the long term. The attention paid to the protection of the trees adjacent to the cottage will allow them to continue to grow with good health.
Three of the larger trees we are removing have been badly damaged in high winds over the last two years. We are always conscious that the loss of mature trees from the collection can be emotive for visitors of the garden and for members of staff who become personally attached to individual trees. We do all that we can to ensure that the tree collection is managed in a sustainable way and that our large trees are protected. We are always planting more trees out in the collection.
This week with the help of our HND Horticulture students we have planted out some existing new trees. The species have been chosen to suit the different sites’ characteristics and with good aftercare we hope these to grow and establish quickly. An Acer and a Castanea sativa collected from the Kackar Mountains in North East Turkey have been planted where the Castanea sativa was removed at the end of the summer. Just above this we have planted a Platanus orientalis collected in Lebanon. On the lawn to the South East of the pond we have planted 3 Alnus collected in Sochi and 2 Liquidamber styraciflua collected from Taiwan.”
The larger tree removals on the Botanic Cottage site will be carried out by the in house arboriculture team starting on Monday 24th February.