July was a busy month for maintenance and now we’re starting to shift focus towards maximising the number of trees we can get planted this coming winter.
Teamwork last month
Tree Watch volunteers have been out working in small teams over the past few weeks to keep their roads looking tidy. We covered Burbage Road, Danecroft Road, Elfindale Road, Elmwood Road, Frankfurt Road and Half Moon Lane in July and we’ll be visiting Carver Road and Holmdene Avenue in early August.
We’re happy to welcome two new street leaders to the roster: Tyrrell Edwards, your point of contact for Burbage, and Charlotte Judet in Elmwood We’re still looking for more volunteers from Casino Avenue, Red Post Hill and Sunray Avenue, so if you have any contacts there who might be interested do please ask them.
Maintenance and watering
Much of our work involves taking away old and unwanted tree cages, along with their stakes, straps and watering bags. Once a young tree is established and sturdy there’s no point in keeping the cage in place. The tree doesn’t need the support and if it grows too big the cage can rub against its bark and tight straps can wear a groove in its trunk.
The green Treegator bag can also be removed when the tree no longer requires regular watering, usually two or three years after being planted. If the empty bag stays in place for too long it will deflect rainwater away from the tree, make a home for rubbish and ants’ nests and allow moisture to build up on the bark.
If you’re looking after a nearby tree you might want to fill your bucket or watering can at one of our growing network of outside taps. Here’s where our generous volunteers have offered to share theirs:
BURBAGE ROAD - nos. 29 and 70
ELFINDALE ROAD - no. 53
FRANKFURT ROAD - no. 60
HOLLINGBOURNE ROAD - nos. 48, 50 and 51
WARMINGTON ROAD - no. 12.
The manager of the car wash on Herne Hill, between Casino Avenue and Danecroft Road, has said you can fill up there too if you speak to him first.
Here’s a useful item about watering from Trees for Cities. We recommend filling the watering bags, which hold 55 litres, once a week in the summer months during their first two years on the street. The amount can be lower during spring and autumn. Always fill them through the little slit between the two straps.
Pruning
Our work teams have also been busy cutting out basal growths - twigs or small branches that grow out from the trunk (known as epicormic shoots) or up from the roots (suckers). These can often get in the way of pedestrians and interfere with parked vehicles.
Once they get long, thick and woody these shoots can only be taken out with loppers and pruning saws, but while they’re small an ordinary pair of garden secateurs will work fine. You’ll notice that the shoots we cut off soon grow back, but as long as the fresh growth is still green and soft you can snip it off yourselves.
Always prune as close to the tree as you can and make sure your tools are sharp and cut cleanly. A messy cut with ragged edges can introduce infection.
Small trees for your street
Another important part of our work with street leaders and volunteers has been to look at possible locations for new trees, usually long stretches between existing trees or empty pits where others have come down. We’ll be speaking to the council soon to make some suggestions about what to plant in the gaps and to make sure they meet their planting commitments this winter.
We’re lucky to have a good number of street trees in Herne Hill, unlike neighbourhoods in the north of the borough. But sometimes the range can look a bit samey. In recent years we’ve seen, among others, a lot of columnar Chanticleer pears (Pyrus calleryana Chanticleer), white-barked Himalayan birches (Betula jacquemontii), sweet gums (Liquidambar styraciflua), flowering cherries (Prunus) and ginkgos (Ginkgo biloba) planted on our streets.
They’re all lovely trees in their own right and very suitable for the area, but how about a little variety in the upcoming planting season? We’ve come up with a few more unusual possibilities. They’re all small and hardy, and our tree officers will no doubt tell us if they’re not appropriate for our pavements. Here’s our list, in alphabetical order according to their scientific names:
Aesculus pavia (red buckeye). A little horse chestnut with upright red flower spikes.
Amelanchier laevis (snowy mespil). Cheerful white flowers in spring and bright red autumn leaves.
Arbutus unedo (strawberry tree). A winter-flowering evergreen with strawberry-like fruit and glossy leaves.
Cornus kousa (Japanese flowering dogwood). Creamy bracts (leaf-like flowers) in summer and fine colours in autumn.
Crataegus prunifolia (broad-leaved cockspur thorn). A compact hawthorn with sprays of white flowers, long-lasting bright berries and red and gold autumn leaves.
Malus floribunda (Japanese crab apple). Lovely pink and white blossom and small fruit that shouldn’t mess up the pavement.
Morus alba (white mulberry). Heart-shaped leaves and sweet edible fruit.
Prunus yedoensis (Yoshino cherry). The only cherry on the list, a gorgeous tree that has made Winterbrook Road famous for its stunning spring display.
Sorbus cashmiriana (Kashmir rowan) or Sorbus vilmorinii (Vilmorin’s rowan). Take your pick: both these upright trees come with white flowers but the clusters of berries are white on the first and pink on the second.
Look them up, tell us what you think and please make some suggestions of your own. You’ll notice we’ve left out the small maples (Acer), which are great for autumn colours and interesting bark. There are just too many of them to whittle down.
Summer fruit
Most street tree blossoms have long gone, so now we’re casting our eyes over the fruit adorning our street trees. Burbage Road is looking particularly fruity. There’s a colourful crop of John Downie crab apples (Malus John Downie) outside no. 62, a hybrid mountain ash (Sorbus hybrida) with orange-red berries at no. 19 and a bountiful common pear (Prunus communis) at no. 9.
The conical Chanticleer pear trees that we're familiar with round here never seem to bear fruit, but there are a few common pears that do. They're broader and scruffier-looking than their neat cousins but they don't get the tough basal growths that afflict Chanticleers.
There’s also an unusual grey alder (Alnus incana) at 44 Stradella Road, with woody cones that turn dark brown later in the year and open up to disperse their seeds. Alders naturally grow next to rivers, lakes and streams and are the only deciduous (leaf-shedding) trees in the UK to produce cones, which are a variety of fruit, just as nuts are.
And finally, our London planes (Platanus x acerifolia) are just coming into fruit, including the one pictured outside Denesmead on Herne Hill. Their spiky, bobble-like fruits are made up of a tight cluster of seeds that will be released over the winter.
Great Trees of Herne Hill
This month’s Great Tree is actually Herne Hill’s tiniest and one of the rarest on London streets. It’s a Persian silk tree (Albizia julibrissin) on the corner of Half Moon Lane and Village Way, opposite the Wesley Court flats on Beckwith Road. You won’t have seen anything like it.
The frilly leaves, like a mimosa’s, are made up of dozens of tiny ‘leaflets’ and they close up at night. In the winter flat, brown seed pods hang in the bare branches. But the real showpiece is the extraordinary blossom. The flowers are out this month and they’re breathtaking: pink and white, fluffy and feathery.
If this whets your appetite, stroll down to the Crown and Greyhound pub in Dulwich Village where there’s a much bigger Albizia on the grass verge. It’s looking spectacular right now so don’t leave it too long and don’t forget your camera!
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