Buying a small garden tree.

Introduction:

. Based on my own experience as a gardener, these are a few practical points on buying a small garden tree in the Dublin area. When I say a small garden tree I mean a small tree suitable for a small space for an apartment verandah to a suburban garden . I will give my brief tree preferences and the definite not’s.

I see you on a weekend morning heading off in a an average family car ,like a Ford Focus ,Golf to make your purchase and bringing it home.

1. Body of speech.

2. Unsuitable Trees – Large trees, beech, horse chestnut .

3. Exotic trees (cordylines, gum ,Tree ferns.) Conifers especially Leylandii –one day you will turn away and when you turn back it will have blotted out the sun.It grows that fast.

4. All the Suitable trees have one thing in common They are all deciduous ( they lose their leaves and will define the seasons beautifully) .From the hopeful flowers of cherries , hawthorn , magnolia in spring ,into the summer calm of green leaves and shade of birches to the fireworks of autumn shown in the leaves of acers and mountain ash ,the jewelled berries of crab apples and the red haws of hawthorns . Then the year ends in the quiet scent of a winter flowering cherry .Prunus Autumnalis. Throughout the season remember there will be birds –the golden beaks of Blackbirds , the wings of finches , the rinsing ring of thrushes..

1. .Where to buy.

2. A.Multiples-Lidls, Homebase, Band Q’s, Woodies.

3. Garden centres-Newlands cross, Johnstown, Murphy and Wood Johnstown Road.

4. Nurseries-only for trade.

5. Marriage of garden centre-Nursery. Scalp and Blakes , Lusk.You buy in this establishment.This is the ideal place to buy.

6. Examine pot.

7. Rootball- a. too small in the pot.b. rootbound.

8. Stem. Tree

9. Stake, tree tie and a bag of compost.

10. Loading the tree into your car.-Get help from the staff that is what they are there for.

11. Driving home. Unload.

Plant trees. In the carbon age.

Why?

1. The opening. Cork city man Paddy Mahony diabetic overweight and older looking than his actual years woke up to the sound of his neighbours beating on his door Friday night November 20th 2009 . As he clambered in a confused state out of his bed he found himself stepping to his great surprise into two feet of water. Paddy is a victim, a victim of the meteorological clock that winds up in the North Atlantic almost daily. . The warm winds of the Gulf of Mexico enter into a dance of war with the cold winds coming from the North Pole. Where? Around Newfoundland and then in a demented passé doble careers across the Atlantic the warm air in flight from the cold lightening its load of water and dumping torrents right into the British Isles. The weather dance becomes more intense in late autumn –winter. And as the globe warms these storms are becoming more violent. .
2. Besides being a victim of meteorology Paddy is also a victim of history, the industrial history of the last 200 years. Mankind has heated the atmosphere by countless burning of fossil fuels. Before the 19^th century the only fossil fuel extensively used was wood which didn’t increase global warming as more trees took up the carbon dioxide exhaled by the burning of the previous generation of trees.
3. But it was when the fossilised trees of geological ages began to be burnt that the earths atmosphere was on its way to carbon overload. With the coming of the steam age man began to exploit the carbon dioxide that was stored in the earth long before historical times . Carbon dioxide lay trapped in the ground underneath from the carboniferous age when great rain forests amidst huge swamps grew and fell and rotted and in time hardened into great seams of hard rock , coal, a reservoir of energy waiting to be burnt. Coal ,the fossilised fuel of the 19^th century . The steel mills and railways sent huge clouds of carbon into the sky.
4. Pollution is global. It is not confined to the country or to the time that pollutes. So the November rain storms of 2009 that sent Paddy O Mahony out of his bed may well be the result of the carbon that was sent into the sky in 1899.
5. What deluges then await us because of the carbon released by the most carbon polluting century in the history of the world? The 20^th century. We are condemned to even greater rain and wind in some future year of the 21^st century the climatologists claim there will be ever greater floods and storms. A great one Every 6or 7 years is the prediction. We will be condemned to a great flood 2016 or 2017?as,. What can we do? We can only await our fate with courage and foresight. The inevitability of heavier rain and stronger winds is certain. As Mary Robinson has said “We are in it now” Governments especially the Irish Government can build greater infrastructure to cope with swollen rivers . Coming to my plea regarding trees . See them as part of the solution to keeping our children and grandchildren dry and safe in their beds
6. My plea is that all those housing developments built on river plains be abandoned, replaced by great stands of native trees. All our rivers will become tree lined and as we move away from the river vallies towards the mountains belts of hardier trees, native to Europe, will provide great shelter belts sweep across the countryside. That will be the work of government and Coillte. What can you do ?
7. You also
8. Can plant trees! If you have no plants in your front garden and have removed them for a car park you are contributing to flash floods. Every front garden should grow one garden tree. Grow a shelter belt at your back boundary. All this shrubbery and trees will improve the water retaining ability of the ground and the land will, despite the heavier rain, be able to store far more water and to release the water more gradually. Our tree cover at the moment is a mere 10% of the landscape, one of the lowest in Europe. Once in the 16^th century it was possible for a squirrel to cross this wooded island, tree to tree from Dublin to Galway. We must aim for 40% of the land covered in trees. Where there is one tree now there should be 4.
9. Besides the country becoming more water retentive there will be other advantages
10. The land will store more carbon dioxide in the trees shrubs, falling leaves and roots . The ecology of insects microbes birds and others up the food chain will increase and multiply. If all these woods seems to fail in the bad years in the face of ever increasing rain , it will only be a seeming failure . There will be the good years in between and think of the leaves of spring, the dawn chorus of birds , the sylvan cool of summer and the golden autumns of each year amidst our trees both in our own gardens and in our great sylvan sweeps of countryside .We will have the poetry of what Joyce Kilmer celebrated and prophesised. We will return as a Celtic people to our culture ,,a woodland people who once venerated and will venerate once again our trees . They will save and inspire the Irish people, keep our old warm in winter, the workers employed cool in summer and our future generation dry throughout the whole year .
11. Plant trees.

Walk up Bray Head .
Preoccupied with granite forms ,rounded crags , piled up rocky tops, crumbling famine walls ,one is still surprised to come across a 17th Dutch pastoral scene as this . The cows stare serenely across a vast and eternal space .