On 29 September, our latest date ever, we completed what we expect to be the last watering round for 2022. Although the trees are beginning to turn, with the autumn colours coming through, and despite the fact that the day after our ‘last’ round we had the first real rain for nearly four months, we are still not completely certain that we have finished. Trees move into their winter sleep at different speeds and the rain we have had, though very welcome, has had little impact after such a summer of drought. Go into your garden and put a spade in the ground and you will find that, only a few centimetres down, the earth is as dry as ever. So we will keep an eye on the trees to ensure that we give water to any that still need it.
As mentioned in previous reports, we have been worried that the extent and depth of this summer’s drought was such that we would be hard pressed to save all the trees. Indeed, we were seriously concerned that we would lose a number, with the three year old trees in the Memorial Park between Bramble Road and Honeysuckle Way a particular concern. By the third year, trees have put down their roots and we normally stop watering at that point. However, we have been watering a number of such trees this summer, including all the relevant trees in the Memorial Park. We have watered every week and on one occasion, after the record temperatures, we watered twice. In all previous years we have been able to take a week off from watering from time to time when there has been enough rain to do the job for us but not this year. Having been worried initially about our ability to deliver three bowser-loads, we spent the second half of our extended five month watering season delivering four. We set out in the spring to water 142 trees but some weeks have watered nearly 200. It has been hard going but it needed doing if we were not to lose trees.
It is very rewarding therefore to report that we succeeded in saving all the substantial trees with a single exception – one of the four red maples we planted last December in Forest Road, near Laburnum Way. We hope to replace it this winter. All the trees which showed such signs of distress in July and August are now showing some signs of growth and we are confident that they will return next spring.
There is not such good news about the whips we planted to mask the electricity substation near Cut Throat Lane. Our normal practise, as recommended by the Woodland Trust, is not to water whips. Even though we eventually felt forced to abandon this policy, we could not save the majority of the planting. We hope to be able to fill the gaps over the winter.
We now move on to the planting season. Our plans are currently being finalised with the funding bodies and details will be set out in our next report. Given the exceptionally dry state of the ground, we are not going to be able to start planting until we have had a lot more rain to soften the earth. Realistically, we are unlikely to be able to start before the beginning of November, perhaps even later. As we hope to be planting around 70 substantial trees again (plus some whips), it is going to be a busy winter on a restricted timetable. If anyone is interested in helping, they would be very welcome. Just get in touch using the contact details on this site.
While we finalise our planting schemes and wait for the autumn rains, we shall be carrying out maintenance on our existing trees. We have previously mentioned the serious damage which mowing machines can cause and the photos below shows a recent spectacular example on the Allectus Way estate, where the mower snapped off both the support posts, shredded the watering tube and, by smashing the cage into the tree, broke off one of the lower branches. Of course, where the mowers have damaged posts, we cannot yet replace them because the ground is too hard to knock new posts in!
So, this has been a very testing summer. Though we can hope that not every summer will be as rainless as this one, it is clear that the trend is towards drier, warmer summers. This may mean that we will have to consider planting trees that can cope better with such conditions and perhaps drop some of our current favourites. I doubt that you will be seeing groves of olive trees around Witham in the near future but some other formerly exotic species may become more familiar.
Richard Hawkes
October 2022
