2 minute read
Denbighshire CC Tree Nursery
Denbighshire County Council Tree Nursery
On the 10th of July I was one of a group of Community and Town Councillors invited to visit Denbighshire’s Tree Nursery, located between St Asaph Business Park and St Asaph itself. A very hot day - and even hotter inside the polytunnels where we saw thousands of young trees and wildflowers.
The plants are grown from seed collected mainly within Denbighshire – though seeds for a few trees were collected from 7 miles outside the County boundary. The rationale is that these trees will be more used to the environment in the county than others brought in from elsewhere.
They are all native trees except for Sweet Chestnut which has been here so long that much of our wildlife has adapted to it, so this is being propagated as well.
One of the trees being grown here is the Black Poplar, which is quite rare – there are some in the park alongside the river in St Asaph. These trees have male and female varieties and need both in order to propagate naturally. However, female trees are very rare, having been removed in many places because of their very fluffy seeds which are spread in huge quantities.
We were told that most of the existing male Black Poplars have been produced from cuttings and are clones of a small number of donor trees. The Tree Nursery is planning to reintroduce more Black Poplar trees grown from seed - especially females.
The nursery is part of a new 70-acre nature reserve which is under construction on a former farm owned by Denbighshire County Council. It isn’t very good land and now beneath it there is a mass of cables etc to the neighbouring large sub-station for the windfarms.
Many of the trees and flowers produced here will be planted in this new Green Gates Nature Reserve. Thousands have already been planted throughout Denbighshire.
Much of the work here is done by volunteers. The site isn’t open to the public but there are plans to have trees and wildflowers on sale in the future….PJR, Editor
