Visit from the Tree Man

I have mentioned Graham Tuley before. His second visit deserves a separate posting and I only hope I can remember all his advice. It was a jolly hot day and we walked around looking at trees and discussing management strategies until I was bushed. And then we did it again after lunch.

Graham is a forester of standing, now retired. We don’t know the full extent of his expertise; but we accept it as far beyond what we will ever have the capacity to benefit fully from, if you get my drift. For us, it is the regenerating old woodland aspect that is important.

We made the beginnings of an inventory: pretty much the species that I have mentioned before. What we should be trying to encourage are the oaks and hazels, which are old; and only the hazels seem to be putting out seedlings. Birch doesn’t really need much encouragement, though it would be nice to see some young ones getting beyond bonsai size. We should try to get the right variety of Scots pine to gain or regain a foothold.

There is a lot of erudite stuff about Scots pines which I have somewhat forgotten, taking away from it the memory of the name of a book, which Roy has written down somewhere, and the fact that Scots pines have various varieties (sub-species?) that appear only in very restricted areas. The Knoydart pines at Runival and Barrisdale are completely different from the ones in Glengarry. There is a pocket of very ancient trees indeed just over the hill from the Wood in the direction of Loch Loyn. Apparently, it is important not to interfere with the speciation and geographical speciality, so we must be careful to take seeds for our pines from old trees in Glengarry, and not planted ones.

In general, we should be putting trees where bracken flourishes – no point in even thinking of doing anything in the bogs. I am reasonably content with that, though I shall probably try the odd willow in the bog – acceptable as it is a native tree, and taxodium, to see if it grows knees. This is markedly not acceptable, or perhaps just marginally so if placed near the house. I am not to plant a Wellintonia. (Mutinous muttering – but I might just conceivably get away with it in an overtly gardened place.

We also discussed deer management. The new approach seems to be to try cohabitation. Donald the ghillie at Kinlochhourn would like this, too. We should try to set out easy routes through the wood from top to bottom, and otherwise do a little topical fencing in small areas. Deer don’t like what I believe is called an in-and-out in show jumping. So an enclosure only a few metres across will discourage them. As Esther noticed, just a plain piece of wire fencing may discourage them if a seedling tree is tangled up in it.

There are other odd places where trees are regenerating – a little stand of alders up quite near the top of the west burn, for example, where an angle of fencing makes a sort of nook, not actually enclosed, but just sufficiently discouraging to keep the deer off.

Graham is keen on growing from seed and so we will be keenly collecting bird cherry seeds and rose hips as well as pine cones, and making natty little wire entanglements for them. Hours of innocent pleasure.