Ian Cook

As I travel a lot with my work, I see a lot of new build housing estates. Rarely do I see new tree planting schemes that survive past the first year. The country seems to be littered with skeletons of newly planted trees. As a landscaper, it frustrates me that in this industry, there’s a complacency around the establishment of newly planted trees/shrubs/hedging and their management in the first 2 years. It’s a waste of resources and in my opinion, money would be better spent on planting younger and native specimens, which haven’t spent years in a fertile container of compost, only to be put into (more often than not) heavy clay soils or builders rubble and be expected to flourish. Out of these 10 specimens at the end of my road, only 3 still have some leaves on (the rest have died) are in decline and will probably not survive past next year. The industry needs a reform to ensure that the efforts made to plant new trees isn’t a waste of time/resources.