Harvesting, Planting and Stratifying Tree Seeds: NRN tree project grows

This Autumn we've all been getting excited to learn about trees for our new wet woodland project.

NRN and Long Mead Foundation have entered into a new partnership with International Tree Foundation (ITF) to support this project. ITF are providing some funding, a knowledge base and materials to create a new tree nursery at Long Mead Local Wildlife Site, which we'll build over time into a nursery to supply the wet woodland and other partners with a variety of native trees grown from local veteran trees. 

Tree Nursery

Much activity over the last few weeks has been focused on collecting and preparing tree seeds, with visitors to Eynsham Apple Day, 1st Eynsham Beavers and Scouts and regulars at our Wednesday Plant Propagation group all mucking in to extract blackthorn and hawthorn seeds from berries, planting hazel and crabapple pips and collecting as much local seed as we can. 

_{Collecting tree seeds including blackthorn, hawthorn, bullace, field maple, hazel & alder from an well established countryside hedge}

_{Learning to identify trees from leaf shape and seeds.}

_{Blackthorn seeds (sloes) collected ready to be processed} 

_{NRNers bag up tree seeds to stratify over the winter}

International Tree Foundation will be supporting us through this learning process. We are one of four community tree nurseries being established across Oxfordshire. There are no longer any commercial local tree nurseries in the county. Our aim is to collect local native and naturalised tree seeds from the local area and grow them to support our environment.

Native and naturalised species are better suited to supporting local wildlife, are more resilient to our local climate conditions, and, as the seeds are collected right here on our doorstep, help reduce both costs and travel emissions.