By the end of 2021 we had planted 71 substantial trees and over 200 whips in this planting season.
There remained one project, to be funded by Braintree District Council (BDC), to plant 30 trees
near the play area in Spa Road opposite the Asda supermarket. This would have brought the
number of new trees to over 100. In the event BDC had to divert resources to cope with the tree
damage resulting from the storms and high winds in the early part of 2022 and the Spa Road
project had to be postponed to the 2022/23 planting season.
We used this gap in our work to carry out the maintenance work we had identified last autumn, as
well as remedying some damage to our own trees resulting from the high winds. When we plant
trees we provide two posts and a crossbeam to support the trees, which are attached to the cross
beam by a rubber tie which expands as the tree begins to grow (and is removed after a few years
when the tree no longer needs support). A number of the ties had broken in the rough weather of
the early part of the year and had to be replaced.
Other than a single tree planted in January in memory of the wife of a member (and funded by the
member), our only planting in 2022 so far was of bulbs, supplied free by BDC, on the corner of
Forest Road and Lime Close. We were pleased to welcome two new members, Sally and Steve,
to help us with this task. The bulbs were made available only in January and we had some doubts
that, planted so late, they would flourish. In the event there was a good show of flowers and the
display should improve in future years as the bulbs naturalise. We are not planning to divert our
efforts from trees to flowers but the offer of free bulbs seemed too good to miss and we thought
the flowers would complement the trees we planted nearby in the autumn and would add to the
amenity for local residents.
We water the trees we plant for the first two years (longer if necessary). Having planted 71 trees in
this planting season, the same number as in the 2020/21 season, we have a record 142 trees to
water this year. In some ways it is not a bad thing that the Spa Road project was postponed as we
had some doubts as to how we would cope with watering 172 trees. We were already facing an
additional demand, since, whereas last year’s watering of what was then a record number of trees
was made easier by the fact that the trees were located on a limited number of fairly compact sites,
this year we have more and generally less compact sites to visit across a wider area.
We thought that we should make an early trial run to start working out the best route to reach all
the trees to be watered. So we met on 21 April at the Memorial Park between Bramble Road and
Honeysuckle Way and from the first bowser load were able to water more than 50 of the 74 trees
planted in the last two years of this three year project. Sadly, this was as far as we got, as the
pump which takes water from the River Brain to fill the bowser stopped working at this point and
could not be brought back to life. So we had to abandon our trial, the pump will need to be
professionally repaired and we will try again on 5 May. The ground is already beginning to dry out,
little rain is forecast and it is vital that we start the watering as soon as we can so that the trees
have the best chance of survival. If you want to know what happens if you plant trees and do not
water them, you have only to look at some of the local building developments where our surveys
indicate that around 25% of trees fail in the first year. Our own failure rate over the first two years is
around 1%.
Richard Hawkes
April 2022
