As farmers, local authorities, and landowners do their bit to get more trees in the ground, nurseries are finding demand on the rise. Jack Haugh spoke to key players to find out how they’re coping with the challenges they face.
PLANT and grow, like you’ve never planted and grown before. As far as mottos go, it’s rather apt for the UK’s nurseries. Demand is on the rise and only going to go one way as local authorities, farmers and landowners try their best to put 7,000 hectares of trees in the ground each year.
Throw in the ever-prevalent challenges of Brexit, the effects of COVID, a myriad of pests and diseases, and some of the worst storms on record and you’ll understand why now could be a time of tribulation for one of the major cogs in the country’s tree-planting wheel.
The good news, at least, is it’s also an era of opportunity. With more people than ever before looking for high-quality British-grown trees, nurseries are experiencing something of a boom and those on the ground expect it to last.
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“The last few months for us have been extremely busy,” said Hillier Nurseries’ sales director Adam Dunnett. “We mainly deal with local authorities, garden designers, and landscapers, all of which have seen quite a significant increase in demand.
“Local authorities are setting aside a significant proportion of their budget to plant trees and have a significant desire to grow proper British-grown trees.
“It’s been great. The last 12 months for us have been record-breakingly busy. It’s a very good time for the industry.”
“The conditions have been great this year,” added Ben Goh, commercial director of Maelor Forest Nurseries. Like Hillier, Maelor offers a wealth of options to consumers. But what are people actually putting in the ground?
“With new woodland creation and tree planting generally we are seeing an increase in demand for full sibling Sitka,” said Ben. “We’ve always said you want to plant the best trees you can and full sibling is better than improved Sitka. We would say the trend change is long overdue.”
While trends around species appear to be evolving, the government’s tree-planting goals are not. The thing about targets, though, is they can often be found on your back. That’s not strictly the way Adam and Ben see them, but there’s agreement that it isn’t as simple as the emphasis on numbers suggests.
Between now and the end of the current parliament – which could be 2024 or much sooner, depending on what happens to Boris Johnson, prime minister at the time of writing – England needs to plant 7,000 hectares each year. That’s more than double what was achieved in the last planting season.
“We would rather there was less emphasis on the numbers game and more about the quality of the trees being planted and the size of the lots,” said Adam. “We would rather see more emphasis on growing larger trees than the headline figures. We’d also like to see more emphasis on having budgets for maintaining those trees.”
Pointing to increased demand for British-grown products in the face of tree diseases from elsewhere – “there is greater awareness and that’s not always something we got right” – Adam added: “It can be a bit of a false economy. We plant more trees but don’t look after them and help them thrive.
“If they die, it’s going against where we want to be. The target is a relatively quick fix for one term of parliament.”
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“The demand is increasing,” said Ben. “I don’t know if it’s keeping track of where the targets are but it is increasing. Everybody wants the increase to be higher rather than lesser.
“It’s about both quality and quantity. The challenges we’ve got are big, so from that point of view it has to be quantity. But you don’t want to plant stuff and then not look after it at that point in the pipeline.
“That comes down to labour availability and expertise in the forestry sector.”
Not only is it something of a sticking plaster, but it’s also coming to a head at a time when the industry is already struggling to plug a skills gap. With Brexit closing the door to many workers on the continent, nurseries are having to adapt to fill much-needed roles, but it hasn’t been easy.
“It is probably the biggest thing for us, like a lot of industries,” said Ben, who joined Maelor in January 2021, a year after the UK officially left the European Union. “We’ve been expecting it for a couple of years and we are a seasonal business so tend to think of things in seasons.
“It’s been coming down the line and we see it this season. It’s been a big change and it’s not been easy.”
Adam agreed. “Labour, or lack of it, has been a problem going back many years.
“We have struggled to recruit skilled tree growers for decades and have to train them in-house.
“Brexit has taken away the ability to get the less-skilled – but still really important – labour. We have recruited Eastern European workers and with Brexit that’s not there.
“We’ve managed to plug the gaps with UK workforce but we don’t know how it will go for the challenges that lie ahead.”
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