Ever since we bought Brel, we’ve been planting trees. We started with the orchard. The idea of having an orchard was very special to me and being able to grow apricots and cherries of our own was a huge excitement. We haven’t had total success - we’ve never been able to grow peaches or nectarines - everyone else around us does, so I’m not sure what we’re doing wrong! Cherries have taken a long time to come good but we think that we probably didn’t have a good pollinator tree - which we now have. Apricots have been very good lately and our apple trees have healthy crops. But it is the plums which are the star of the show - mirabelles, greengages and some large yellow juicy plums which are quite delicious. Add to these the crops from the wild plum trees around the property and we end up with a lot of plums - even though they don’t crop heavily every year. July and August are full of jam and chutney making as well as baking tarts, crumbles and crisps as the plums ripen.
Every year, I’ve tried to plant two or three trees. A mulberry tree was one of the first - and it’s now matured to a rather fine specimen.
We are not short of trees on the property - in fact above us on the side of the hill we have woodland but a huge percentage of the trees are oaks and the landscape is very green. So my aim has always been to add flowering trees and coloured foliage
That’s not to say that we don’t love the oaks - in particular the one below the terrace which we estimate is about 350 years old - a very special tree.
Another early planting was the flowering cherry in the courtyard. This was added when we converted a small barn opposite the back door to a little guest house - and the courtyard was landscaped. It’s grown prodigiously and we look out on it with great delight in the spring. Would that some of the other recent flowering trees would grow as fast - but the soil is not great and the summers are blistering.
Tree planting seems to be very fashionable with world wide reforestation projects, national drives for more planting and now London is getting a million new trees. It seemed a good idea to get on the bandwagon to mark our 40th wedding anniversary this year (2020) with a special project - 40 more trees for Brel.
The plan was hatched in late 2019 and I got out my tree books (once again) and started to think about just what we should put in. The most important thing was to be able to water them in for a couple of years - and I’m not talking taking a watering can from time to time. We had to find places where we could either put in a new system or extend what is already in place to provide daily water. I think there are 5 trees that actually have to be watered by hand but everything else is on automatic and using lake water. The land is so chalky that hosepipes clog up after a few years - so we are forever having to put new links and systems.
Hugely helpful in the process of finding what to plant has been the discovery of a great nursery, not that far away, run by a young Dutchman and his Flemish wife. Enthusiastic and very helpful they have a large stock of trees and most of the ones that I first thought of were in stock with more suggestions coming later. Flowering cherry, winter flowering cherry, amelanchier, Judas tree, albizia, koelreuteria, laburnum and catalpa were all in the first batch. That was before lockdown. Then I found that they would deliver trees to us, so after we arrived and could no longer go out to shop at the nursery, we chose more to decorate the property - six birch for two mini groves, eucalyptus, purple hornbeam, dark maple, pink horsechestnut, and to remind us of Brook Green - two London plane trees.
Quite a few of the little trees have gone in to the top terrace of the grass garden and beyond into the copse where we already had a few niewish trees above a grove of wild plums. New ones all get a metal protection because of our many deer who love to rub up against every tree. I have to pay tribute to Kate out gardener who has dug more of the tree holes. I got her to agree to use a man with a mini peel - but he was just not available when we needed to dig the holes. Thank you Kate - you are amazing. Of course she had to do the watering systems too.
Exciting additions with the new plantings are two magnolias. Our chalky soil would normally be totally unsuitable but the guys at the nursery spend a good deal of time grafting magnolias and other acid loving plants on to chalk loving stock. This one is called Sweet Merlot and is dark purply pink. I can’t want to see it. A second yellow one has been planted with other yellow flowering trees in the ‘Secret Garden’ above the pool.
The view to the lake shows some of the trees that have gone in during the past 10 years - flowering cherry, crab apple, a mixed hedge and plane trees to protect some of the vegetables.
I have to admit that I have a small tree nursery as well with baby trees that have self seeded. This year there have been literally thousands of acorns which have put down roots in every flower bed that we have here (the vegetable garden is far enough away from the oaks to avoid the acorns). I spend time every day pulling them up but have potted up a few. There are also horse chestnuts, sycamore and ash. So I am growing some of these for the future.
Of course, most trees grow quite slowly and here with the baking summers they grow particularly slowly. Sadly we won’t see our newly planted trees at maturity. But how lucky we are to be able to plant for the future. We just hope that whoever is in Brel in future years will appreciate our choice of trees and their positions! As well as continuing the planting programme.