The happy bunch on completion of the work.

National Tree Week, 23 November – 1 December  is the UK’s largest tree  celebration and launches the start of the winter tree planting  season.

Today we have been taking part by beginning our tree planting season. RBGE students from the HND/BSc in Horticulture with Plantsmanship course have been out in the garden planting a selection of trees and shrubs from seed collected in Japan, America, Korea and Turkey . Early winter is the best time of year to plant trees, the soil is still warm so the roots will get a chance to establish over winter before the plants begin to grow again in the spring. We focused our planting efforts in two locations in the garden where gaps in the Southern and Western wind breaks have developed. We hope that the new trees will help shelter the rest of the collection from high winds in the future.

Digging a planting pit for the Alnus incana ssp rugosa

Checking the planting depth on a Pinus syvestris grown from seed collected in Turkey

Planting new trees is a very important job and an esential activity to maintainin the tree collection at the botanics in Edinburgh. In 2012 Stephen Anderton writting in the Times put the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh at the top of a list of the best places to see trees in Britain.