Once upon a Time... A Tree Paradise
2 October 2005
By Markéta Janouchová
Markéta Janouchová was a Volunteer Officer with Conservation Volunteers between May 2001 and July 2005. Here she explains a little about her life and experiences working in our Tree Nursery at Clandeboye Estate, Co. Down.
When I first appeared in the Tree Nursery on one sunny May afternoon, I realised I was in Heaven and immediately decided that I was going to stay here for a while. I don’t regret it at all. I love the work here, the peacefulness of the beautiful surroundings (Clandeboye Estate where the Tree Nursery is located is one of the most wooded areas in Northern Ireland) and I especially like the friendly people whom I have so far met here.
People with whom I work make me feel I’m very welcome and although the most important fact for me is the good reason behind all we do – to reforest Ireland – without being appreciated by others it would be more difficult for me to enjoy the work here thoroughly.
So the main reason is there, to help Nature to recover as she deserves it deeply. To go into more detail, there is nothing more satisfying than to see a seed, which we collected on a beautiful sunny/rainy day in the Glens of Antrim growing into a big tree (or at least big enough to be transplanted). I would even say it’s intoxicatingly rewarding as they keep on growing, indeed, they are growing like MAD! As you would say in Northern Ireland.
Now briefly, what does the work in the Tree Nursery consist of? We are involved in seed scouting, seedbed consolidating, sowing, surgical weeding, seed collecting, seed-processing, grading and transplanting trees, heeling them in and lining them out. We have just recently built a seed laboratory for counting, weighing and testing seeds. We keep vital records of all we do to find out optimal sowing density for the next year and a lot more.
Now I used some really big words, didn’t I? Well it doesn’t matter if you call something consolidating or “penguin-like walk on the seedbeds” or if you describe seed-processing as a “crazy dance with a stick and a hose-pipe”…whatever you feel like…I feel funny to describe things so scientifically, on the other hand I wouldn’t like to diminish the value of what we do by using very simplistic language.
Why do you think…?
So why do you think I believe our work at the Tree Nursery is so important? Well, let me give you some numbers to think about. As I speak the autumn/winter season is over and we have dug up and graded more than 138,000 trees, the majority of them 40-60 cm tall and ready to be planted to create new woodlands. If planted at proper spacing to give them enough room to grow to maturity (5 metres apart) they would cover an area of more than 300 hectares!
Compared to the amount of trees cut down in the rainforests each day it’s still shamefully insignificant, nevertheless I think that’s not bad at all, is it? Especially when we consider the wildlife we can support through the creation of a new food chain producing ecosystem. If we take alder for example – Alnus glutinosa (Latin), fearnóg (Irish), Schwarz-Erle (German), aulne glutineux (French), olse lepkavá (Czech), mézgás éger (Hungarian) or whatever you call them – each single tree supports at least 90 species of insects. By planting all the alder we have dug up this year (and it is now more than 16,000 trees) we will support at least 1,440,000 insects alone. Quite impressive if you ask me.
To talk about the work we do in more detail I would need to write a whole book, never mind a magazine but if you do want to know more I would suggest that you readers out there should look at the tree nursery part of this website, or try the Trees of Our Future website. Just before I go however, let me leave you with this message;
Please, all you kind wee folks out there – LET THEM TREES GROW!
DÍKY MOC*
Markéta
*Thank you in Czech!