Galleries · Our trees
This page is a way for me to put my thoughts down on the various trees that are growing in our 2.5 acre smallholding. Click on the thumbnails to open a bigger version.
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Zelcova serrata
Flanked by a field maple on the left, and a giant redwood on it's right, this tree spent the first 20 or so years of it's life in a Belfast sink as a large bonzai. I planted it in our front garden in about 2004 when it was about 1.5 metres high. They tend to grow sideways, so a fair bit of formative pruning was required to get it growing in approximately the right direction. There is a striking specimen in Cambridge botanic gardens planted in the mid 20th century that forms a huge dome with branches reaching to the ground. They have small leaves that give the crown a dense fuzzy appearance, and invariably colour well in the autumn. |
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Field maple.
I found this field maple (leaves shown on the left of the photo) growing in a local hedgerow. It was showing a good red autumn colour earlier than most field maples, had bright red seeds twice the size of normal ones, and attractive deeply cut leaves. I have set some seeds to see if it will produce any similar offspring. On the right, leaves and seeds from a random field maple for comparison, picked at the same time. |
