Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2013 | Page 65

COUNTRY LIFE

T he Isla nd’s ra rest
trees to retu rn
Natural Enterprise is working with
Landscape Therapy and the Isle of Wight
College to help conserve two of the
Island's rarest trees. The native Black
Poplar and elegant Small-leaved Lime are
restricted to a handful of remaining Island
locations; in fact to just one known tree in
the case of the poplar!
The plan is to take cuttings and
propagate the collected material thanks to
the expertise of the college's horticulture
unit. Once the new sapling is potted and
rooted and ready to transplant they will be
moved out to the Big Tree Plant nursery
in Ryde where they can be grown on for
another year or two before being ready to
head off to permanent homes in planting
projects around the Island.
The Black Poplars make magnificent
waterside trees and age to look exactly like
an illustration from 'Wind in the Willows'!
The Small-leaved Lime is a fascinating
species, now so rare, and yet peat cores
from the Eastern Yar reveal a prehistoric
forest of nothing but lime that cloaked
the valley sides for hundreds of years.
For this reason it will be Sandown, Lake,
Newchurch and Arreton that will be the
first places searched for good locations to
return this beautiful tree.

Back to nature
The summer is usually our quiet time! The
idea being we work hard when it’s cold
and wet and take life a little easier when
it’s warm and sunny. Last winter was a
bit of a washout in many ways, tree and
hedge planting never really got going,
and when it did the planting window was
all but over before it began. But where
there’s a Ying there’s a Yang, and since
May our work load has been full.
Not just full, but varied, which is nice.
I look forward to the woodland and
hedgerow maintenance, trimming and

A cou ntry ma n's dia ry

spraying to control competitive grasses
and seeing how the trees have been
doing. It appears to be a good growing
year, and with last year’s disappointing
fruit crop behind us, this year looks
promising. We managed to plant over
150 fruit trees last season and it’s looking
good for the apples and pears, along with
the fruiting hedges. Those hedges we
mulched last year have really got going.
Other jobs have included weed control
in ponds, pulling and raking invasive
non-natives that were taking