Storms & Sorbus

Our pre-Christmas volunteer work-party was spent helping to tidy up and repair some of the damage that the recent winter storms unfortunately wreaked on the planting site. This involved re-staking quite a few trees, securing tubes and replanting some saplings that were pulled out. Thankfully none of the saplings seemed damaged, and we don’t see an issue with them becoming healthy established trees in the future.

It wasn’t all negative though, as the day also marked a special occasion, the planting of the chosen tree in the central path area – a wild service tree Sorbus torminalis. This was planted by two of our long-standing project volunteers, Sarah & Tim, to rapturous applause from everyone else.

The rather large sapling was propagated from one of the self-seeded trees here at Westonbirt, so ties to the site nicely, and is one of the UK’s rarer native trees. In fact, Westonbirt Arboretum leads a consortia to bring together institutions and experts to prevent the extinction of Sorbus species – including wild service tree.

Wild service was traditionally used for wine-press screws, billiard cues and musical instruments, and the berries were used to flavour beer before hops. It’s also known as chequers - possibly due to its square patchwork bark pattern.

It was a lovely morning, and great to see another milestone in the project being achieved.

Read our other blogs about the Silk Wood Community Planting Project here...