Julia Buckley MP has presented Parliament with a petition to save the newly famous Darwin Oak from being removed for Shrewsbury’s new North West Relief Road.
Good for Julia Buckley MP helping a 500-year-old tree who doesn’t even vote.
Our interests here are horticultural, not political, but perhaps they overlap when we point out that saving old trees is not a such concern in places where new trees are thriving and multiplying.
Acorns, called Oak Nuts by people who will not be persuaded otherwise, should be ripe and falling from oak trees in most of the UK around right now (mid-October).
You can pick the intact ones off the ground, perhaps shaking a branch with a long stick to encourage some nice ones to fall.
With a pocket full of acorns, one could pop them in the ground around the place as one strolled, single-handedly causing who knows how many 500-year-old oaks to appear a mere 500 years later.
And stretches of Shrewsbury’s new relief road could be lined with oaks grown from those acorns; they would probably be grown to a certain size in a nursery field first, then planted when the major construction work was complete.
But if possible, it’s best to grow a plant from seed in its final location, the natural way.
One of our patrons, Owen Humphrys, planted some acres of oak forest* that way in the Cotswolds; we don’t have photographs yet, so here is a military band homecoming parade with rousing bagpipes to give you the feel of it.
*If you grow from seed and aim to have tall, straight, single trunk trees for timber, the young plants still need protection from herbivores like spirals or tube guards for best results, otherwise they can get grazed into a multi-stem tree.