Re-greening Victorian suburbia: WGG demo session, 7 Jan

The weather knew it was going to be Green Gym this Saturday. After a week with rain (so the ground was soft and yielding) planting day dawned bright and clear. As Green-Gym days should.

Five of us gathered at the appointed hour outside the west door of St Margaret’s Church, Oxford, to let the old year go and bring in a new planting scheme. Essentially this was an exercise in re-wilding. None of the ground around the Gothic-revival building has ever been used for burials. Most is planted out for aesthetic effect and/or set aside for useful purposes such as bike-rack, car-parking space, civic-community war memorial, etc. The area behind the war memorial, however, has always tended to be a bit of a blank space with no obvious use. Latterly it has been regarded by some as simply wasteland. Since humans had no particular use for the space, it seemed a good idea – I hope it will prove to have been a good idea – to turn it over to species other than homo sapiens.

To make the spot a more friendly environment for birds and small mammals, logs were re-arranged into a habitat pile ...

patches of compacted soil forked over, and hedgerow-style trees planted, 20 hawthorn, 2 blackthorn, 2 dog rose, and 1 holly:


Within the hour the scene had been transformed into something which looks quite kempt as a backdrop to the war memorial, and should link in with the other patches of wildlife-friendly garden in the immediate area. Three parishioners had also learned the skills of treeplanting – though there is little to the art really. At its simplest, one simply digs a slot ...

posts the sapling ...

and heels in. (Clare, Edmund, James: I hope you enjoyed your small taste of rural culture!)

Our newcomers to things rural also learned the true meaning of the word ‘stakeholder’. It refers to the worker who holds the stake upright beside a newly-planted tree while another volunteer – in true Green-Gym fashion – uses an improvised mallet to drive the stake home. On this occasion the implement of choice was one of a pile of abandoned housebricks. And yes, one of them was in the process accidentally broken into two brickbats.

The site being more of an urban environment than our usual work-sites, we did do some things differently from usual. As the wild-rabbit population of North Oxford is limited, and very few deer roam the streets, the growing trees probably do not need protection from predators who will nibble the bark. So no spiral tree-guards. Indeed, the trees should grow better – with more bushy side-growth – than they would if their style were cramped inside tubular plastic. The main dangers the treelets face here are human predation, possibly alcohol or other-drug-fuelled, or any inadequacy in the soil, which we do not know about. We should see next spring how the plants, nurtured in BTCV nurseries, have taken to their new location.

If we had been planting a stock-proof hedge, we would have spaced the trees closer together and in a double line, diagonally opposite each other.

If this were a boundary hedge, we would have marked out the line with a couple of pegs and a length of string – and stuck to it.

If we were planting in a rural setting, we would not have used the purpose-made stakes and ‘supersoft tree ties’ which seemed more appropriate to this environment. In the countryside we do not usually need to tie whips to support stakes, as both are secured within tree-guards. If we did, then we would use plain string! Stakes and canes we can also fashion from older trees we have coppiced.

This was also the first time I have chosen and ordered trees for planting. Normally a site warden does that sort of thing for us. Naturally I looked to see what combinations of species other people with more experience order – and what species flourish in the surrounding area. Another factor to take into consideration was which varieties tolerate – or even positively like – shade. As for size, going for the ‘whips’ we are used to at Green Gym was a no-brainer. The smallest trees available (‘bare root’: 40-60 cm) are not only cheaper, they also establish better.

Music while we worked was not a first for WGG. Members of the Oxford Bach Ensemble were rehearsing inside the church for their very successful cantata concert for the New Year, so it was a very classy aural backdrop to the session.

One practice, however, was retained absolutely unchanged from normal WGG procedure: home-made cake with a ‘thank you’ mug of tea.