Juanita Browne: It's the perfect time to plant a native tree

You'll be helping our native wildlife and creating a natural carbon sink

Rowan or Mountain Ash is a native tree that produces lots of flowers to feed the bees and berries to feed the birds. Picture: Juanita Browne

‘The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now’ — old Chinese proverb 

There’s probably nothing more valuable for nature than planting native trees. You won’t be just helping our native wildlife, but creating a natural carbon sink and helping our climate. This is the perfect time of year to get planting. The trusted guidance has always been "when there’s an ‘r’ in the month" — so any time from September to April is ideal to plant a tree. 

There is a tree (or many trees) to suit any size of garden or schoolyard. It pays to do some research into the eventual size and spread of the fully grown tree in order to put the right tree in the right place. Choosing native tree species is the best and easiest option for novice gardeners — native trees have evolved to naturally grow well in Irish soils and weather conditions, and our birds and insects will benefit most from the availability of native trees for both food and shelter.

Examples of particularly biodiversity-friendly native trees include hawthorn, blackthorn, ash, birch, hazel, spindle, rowan, holly, willow, crab apple, and oak. Willow, for example, supports 266 different insect species and provides valuable pollen and nectar stores for emerging bumblebees each spring.

Juanita Browne

It’s important to find reputable native suppliers which sell locally sourced stock, such as Coillte nurseries, the Irish Seed Savers Association, and Future Forests, to name a few. NGOs such as the Native Woodland Trust and Crann offer excellent guidance on their websites, as well as helping volunteers to take part in planting days.

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Schemes that will advise on sourcing and planting native stock:

• Pocket Forests is a super project started by two Dublin-based women Ashe Conrad-Jones and Catherine Cleary during the lockdown in 2020. Their aim is to plant small biodiverse forests in urban areas, for communities, workplaces, and schools. They recycle materials to prepare the ground and help people to create and care for their pocket forests. https://www.pocketforests.ie/
  
• Trees on the Land is a cross-border initiative working to establish young native trees across the 32 counties. The project runs an annual tree planting event with trees being distributed and planted between December and March each year. It offers simple schemes for landowners to access quality native tree mixes, working with farmers, smallholders, community groups, councils, schools, colleges, sports clubs, and many other landowners to co-ordinate sites to accommodate trees. Trees on the Land has planted small woodlands, orchards, hedgerows, shelterbelts, coppice, wood-pasture, agroforestry, individual trees, rows and tree avenues, landscape and amenity trees, reforestation sites and larger woodlands, planting over 1m trees at several thousand sites since 2013.
• The mission of Easy Treesie is to plant 1m trees with Ireland’s 1m school children and their communities by 2024. Contact Easy Treesie if you would like to plant 100-300 trees with your community in the lead-up to Tree Week in March.

By planting native trees, you are helping to provide beneficial ecosystem services and a lasting legacy for future generations.

• Juanita Browne has written a number of wildlife books, including My First Book of Irish Animals and The Great Big Book of Irish Wildlife. Contact the author at [e-mail].