Beat around the bush
A sunny last week of August saw the SWCPP team and volunteers come together to survey the saplings that were planted during 2023-24 to calculate the survival rate - known in forestry as a ‘beat-up survey’.
Although we’d kept an eye on most of the saplings throughout the summer when weeding and mulching, this was the first time we’d properly surveyed their health. This included a section where we used sheep’s wool mulch-mats, so we hadn’t spent so much time in those areas due to them needing less aftercare.
Walking in lines, we worked our way through the forest of tree tubes - removing weeds where they’d grown up through them, and checking on any saplings that weren’t visible, or weren’t looking quite so healthy. Thankfully these were extremely few and far between, and once you’d removed the odd thistle or bramble, a healthy young plant would be revealed to the world.
There were inevitably a few casualties, which mostly included sweet chestnut and walnut. Project Manager Oscar Adams surmised this could be because walnuts are a fairly demanding tree which require a lot of space and light to grow – they may also have been a less established ‘batch’ originally, so may not have taken as well as some others.
e will be replacing the failed trees this coming planting season, but out of roughly 2150, the number found not to have made it through the summer was only 67 – that’s 3%. Given the industry standard survival rate for most planting schemes is 85%, our 97% rate is incredibly high! This is a real testament to the care that was taken during planting, as well as the time taken to look after them this summer by the visiting community groups and schools.
We should all be incredibly proud, and is certainly something to ‘beat’ the drum about!
