Trees

The use, care and maintenance of trees

The Root of it All

This article was published in Landscape Middle East magazine in January 2024. In light of the recent severe storms and floods in the UAE, I thought it would be timely to post this here. How we treat soil and irrigate trees has a big effect on how resilient trees are in resisting damage from such

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What are Ancient & Veteran Trees?

The UK is blessed with a relative abundance of trees classed as Ancient or Veteran when compared to most other countries and there is a growing awareness of their importance. Currently there is no automatic legal protection in place for them so we must raise awareness and look after these unique and valuable habitats. They

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Coppice as an Urban Landscape (Eco)System

To create more vibrant, ecologically oriented urban landscapes, we need to change our perception of what landscapes are and how we manage them. Usually, maintenance is seen as a burden, when it should be appreciated as an asset, providing social and environment health and ecosystem services. A landscape ecosystem should not be a static thing,

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Summer Pruning the Woodland Garden

It’s August and the woodland edge garden has become a bit shady and dense; time for a bit of summer pruning. Multi-stem small trees like Corylus, Euonymus and Viburnum all throw up epicormic shoots and get congested, especially the hazel, whilst the understory plantings have finished flowering and look tall, bedraggled and invaded by the

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The Woodland Edge Garden

Of all the ecosystems out there, forests and woodland are possibly the most abundant and diverse. Think about it; we have a thin layer of soil on the surface of this planet and without foliage, nothing between us and the stars. Plants and especially trees, add layers in-between, build microclimates and nurture life. We should

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A look back at Trees in 2022

On this last day of the year, it’s wet and dull outside, so I thought I’d look back at some of the amazing trees I’ve had the privilege to encounter this year whilst visiting and working in the UAE. Some of these I have worked directly with, surveying them as part of a project or

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Update on Brownfield Site, Abu Dhabi

Some of you will know that I have been following the ups and downs of a brownfield site in Abu Dhabi, near the Corniche. I’ve written two articles on it already, one in 2018 and one earlier this year. Links to these are at the end of this post. I visited again last week, the

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Time to change how we live – and garden

For the first time ever, this summer the UK recorded temperatures in excess of 40°C. Parts of Wennington, a village in East London were consumed by fire. If ever there was a moment to wake up and change how we live, it is now. If we don’t we are individually and collectively committing, in the

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Hope Springs Eternal, a Brownfield Site Revisited

This is a follow-up to an article I wrote in 2018, about a brownfield site in Downtown Abu Dhabi. The original article can be found at the end. I was fascinated at the spontaneous self-seeding of plants – all non-native ‘invasive’ plants – that had taken place. Less than a year later, Google maps revealed

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How to create semi-wild seeded xeriscapes in the Middle East

This is last in a four-part series of articles on this subject, somewhat separated from the other three by time, because of COVID. Links to the first parts are at the bottom. In searching for a new way of creating natural, non-irrigated landscapes in the Middle East, I have already shared how certain species, often

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