Wokingham District Veteran Tree Association
& Wokingham Borough Tree Wardens
Whilst the warmer months are no time to be planting, the Tree Wardens were still busy, out and about amongst the trees and hedgerows.
May saw the Tree Council’s celebration of all things hedgerow during National Hedgerow Week. The Tree Wardens, alongside staff at the Wokingham Library, put together a display to highlight the importance and beauty of our hedgerows. Janet Firth, a WDVTA member, shared her fascinating work on the hedgerows of Barkham, some of which are around 500 years old. This information was a fascinating addition to the display.
The arrival of the hot weather in June highlighted the challenge of sapling survival during the summer months. Newly-planted trees around the new Molly Millars roundabout began to show very obvious signs of water and heat stress. It seemed like they were getting no water during this dry spell even though they had watering pipes sunk into the ground next to them.
Fortunately residents and businesses in the area came to the rescue having been recruited as waterers by local Tree Wardens. The addition of ‘Water Me’ tags to the 7 roadside trees (not the 3 on the roundabout), followed by a chat to residents, helped to highlight the trees’ plight. The watering has now been taken over by the Borough Council, the tags removed and water bags installed on each of the 10 trees. The 7 roadside trees seem to faring reasonably well; the 3 on the roundabout, which could not be reached by local people during the first phase of watering, seem in poor condition now. The tags were supplied free of charge by the Arboriculture Association.
In July, Tree Wardens from across the south of England gathered for the Tree Council’s Regional Tree Warden Forum at a very warm Sheffield Park, Sussex. A fascinating series of talks - outdoors under the trees - culminated in a presentation about the WDVTA Tree Survey by Alison Griffin. It captured the imagination of quite a number of other Tree Warden groups. They were keen to understand more about how it was carried out with a view to starting their own veteran tree surveys. The day finished with a guided walk through the park learning about the many unusual, non-native trees on the site.
Later in July, Arborfield was the venue for a wonderful Tree Walk, hosted by the Reading Tree Wardens and led by our own Gabriella Eöry. It was well-attended with 13 wardens from Reading joining forces with the Wokingham Tree Wardens. It was an extremely interesting walk and new links with the Reading group were forged along the way. We discussed plans to organise more joint ventures in the future.
September saw a deepening of the drought conditions, with many trees across the Borough beginning to suffer, particularly silver birch, sycamore and rowan.
The Tree Wardens attended the Barkham and Arborfield Family Fun Day and the condition of local trees was a hot topic for visitors to our stall. We spoke to many residents of Arborfield Green who proved to be very knowledgeable about their local trees. So much so that many of them won a dip into the Celebrations tin for identifying bark samples in our 'Stick Challenge'! We had a number of keen potential canine participants but they had to be dissuaded as their intentions towards the 'Stick Challenge' were not entirely in keeping with the spirit of the game! Nevertheless it was a great afternoon and it was lovely to talk trees with so many visitors.
We have recently had two meetings with Wokingham Borough Council, the first with the Net Zero team who wanted to learn more about the WDVTA Survey and also the work of the Tree Wardens. This has proved to be a very interesting collaboration and we will be working with the team across a number of different WBC departments in the future. Our first project is linked to National Tree Week at the end of November and will see us presenting an evening talk at Wokingham Library on the work of Tree Wardens. We will also help with tree-based activities for younger children at the library. Our group has been asked by the team to write a regular feature, From The Tree Wardens, for the WBC Environmental News email.
The second meeting, with Head of Environment Services, Andy Glencross, focused on future projects we are proposing at the new Rooks Nest SANG extension in Barkham. We were granted access to the whole site to begin an initial assessment of the hedgerows with a view searching for lost hedge trees. A preliminary visit by four wardens found a number of potential old oaks lost amongst the hedgerows, all just waiting to be liberated! Hopefully we can start work on this project soon.
If you would like to join Wokingham Tree Wardens or find out more about us, complete the online form here.