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How To: Getting Seed Getting Trees Finding Places What to Plant Planting Aftercare Photos + Images: Planting (n/a) Inspiration: Manifesto of the Phantom Treeplanters |
seed collection
I feel a great sadness when I walk in the parks and open spaces in our towns. All around are the great and beautiful trees that our ancestors planted. Most of them are fairly healthy and well looked after, they are a distance from the grime and vibration of the road, and yet there is something missing. They have no young.
Every autumn, someone comes along and sweeps up all the leaves that they returned to the earth after their job was done, and takes away all the seeds. For hundreds of years this has happened. Then, to add insult to injury, new trees from a commercial nursery are plonked in where their babies should have been growing. In spite of all this, they still produce seeds every year, and will carry on doing so as long as they can. After all, one year the tidyers may not come back... For this reason, parks and open spaces, streets and gardens are great places to collect seeds from. It doesn't matter if you don't know what you are doing. It doesn't matter if you fail; those seeds were doomed anyway, and if you succeed - if you manage to establish just one tree in a place there wasn't one before, then you've repaid some of the pleasure we get from trees. It doesn't matter what species you grow. You don't even need to know. If you need to know what conditions the tree needs to grow, take a look at the parent tree, or look for similar trees elsewhere. Of course knowledge is never a bad thing in this respect, but it isn't necessary and you can learn as you go along. Mostly the books and experts contradict each other anyway, so don't take them too seriously. Pick up seeds I know this is true because I've done it. I've planted trees for years and can still only recognise and name a half dozen species. Tree planting for the ignorant masses! It's a good idea to note where each lot of seed you collect comes from. This information can be as detailed as you like. It can be useful when you come to plant the saplings that grow from the seed. However, for all you know, the tree may be in a position it really hates, and is just making the best it can of a bad situation, so don't get carried away with these details. |