Train Hugger Planting Projects

Devon Beech Trees

Tree Planting

Devon Beech Trees

Beech Trees: sustainable forestry

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Like other UK hardwoods beech trees are slow growing compared to softwoods. It takes a hundred and fifty years before a beech is ready to harvest. Over two lifetimes the beach will create habitat, absorb carbon and grow into one of our most handsome species.

When they reach maturity they are extremely valuable but well-managed beech woods are now alas all too rare in the UK. It's easier to grow Sitka Spruce and harvest in forty years for fence posts than to grow a sustainable forest with homes for red squirrels but at this new wood in Devon we're giving it our best shot.

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Listed below are some of the trees planting on this site

If the oak is the king of British trees, then the beech is its queen.A dense canopy of leaves provides a rich habitat for all sorts of insects, its seeds are popular with mice and squirrels, and hole-nesting birds make their homes in beech trunks.Some of the UK’s tallest native trees are beeches, including one that stands at over 44m tall on the National Trust's Devil's Dyke Estate in West Sussex.‍

Beech

You’ll find this striking, brightly-coloured flowering plant in hedgerows and forests all over Europe. The spindle is also a very popular addition to parks and gardens, because of its pink and orange fruit and foliage which turns red in the autumn. Its wood is hard and dense, making it the ideal choice for the manufacture of spindles and skewers, and the discovery of spindle wood at Bronze Age burial sites means man has been using it for thousands of years.

Spindle

The ash is the third most common tree in Britain and thrives in rich, fertile soil where it provides a home for woodpeckers and owls. The ash’s leaves, and indeed its whole crown, can move in the direction of sunlight. You have probably heard of ash dieback disease, a fungus affecting both the leaves and crown. It has already wiped thousands of these elegant trees from our landscape, and experts are trying to stop it. For example, we’ve funded ash planting from genetic stock that is thought to be resilient to Ash dieback disease. We’ve also funded ash where surrounding, diseased trees have been removed (and therefore the pathogen has been removed from the area) and the proportion of ash in the mix is relatively low. If we stop planting ash altogether, any wildlife that relies on it will also die. Although it’s not what we hope for, even if an ash we plant is not able to reach maturity (because it succumbs to dieback), it can still provide a habitat for dependant wildlife. This means that a planted ash can: 1. Give wildlife a fighting chance of finding a healthy ash to live on 2. Give wildlife enough time to wait for a forester to plant a foreign tree species that it can survive on 3. Or (in the longer term) give the wildlife enough time to evolve just enough to be able to survive on a different tree species.

Ash

Other Train Hugger Projects

Continue reading more about our planting projects

Replacing Non Native Tres in Lough Neagh

Pembrokeshire Cricket Bat Willow

Storm Recovery in Berwickshire 2

Storm Recovery in Berwickshire 1

Spruce Replacement in West Sussex

Trees not Brambles in Co.Tyrone

Linking Woodlands in County Antrim

County Antrim New and Old

Case Study: County Down 3

Replacing Non Native Trees in NI

South Tyrone planting for biodiversity

Experimental Planting in Country Tyrone

County Armagh: Different Growth Rates for Better Biodiversity

Case Study: County Down 2

Case Study: County Down 1

Devon Gum Trees

Case Study: Planting for Resilience in Buckinghamshire

Case Study: Conversion of Conifer Plantation to Mixed Broadleaves

Hampshire Mixed Woodlands

North Yorkshire Spruce

Case Study: Saving a Hampshire Woodland from Disease

West Sussex Broadleaf Trees

Devon Beech Trees

Norfolk Oaks

Case Study: Storm Resilience in Northumberland