Grants to bring woods back to Western Isles

[viblir]

Anybody tell if this is avalible to Shetland land owners or if it is another Western Isles, SNP sweetner?

 

http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/grants_to_bring_woods_back_to_western_isles_1_2125818

[PJ of Hildisvik]

As far as i know grants are to be made available here, your best bet is to email James Mackenzie at Shetland Amenity trust to find out details.

[paulb]

the new grants started within the last year it pays for the planting and fencing including rabbit proofing. its not a bad deal.

[Ghostrider]

Auld Salmond might be best advised to take a telling from auld Canute and the tide, if he thinks it wise to pump money in to fighting against the climate.

 

"Experts" may well be right that trees can, when done right, survive the wind, soil quality etc, I hear no mention of salt spray being factored in in that report though, the real tree killer.

[stilldellin]

^ Would agree on a hiding to nothing there, salt air, no soil = no chance

[paulb]

there are some that can cope with it. the aminity trust produced a guide to which would be best. there are trees that cope with simular climates in norway and alaska. you would need to form a shelter belt to get the best growth. a good dry stone dyke would be a good planting shelter.

[Guest posiedon]

paulb

you would need to form a shelter belt to get the best growth. a good dry stone dyke would be a good planting shelter.

The best shelter belt is made by trees/shrubs that can stand the Shetland weather, go visit Rosa at lea gardens.

I have over 100 trees growing in my own garden and have helped plant Micheal's wood, which is dong very well on an exposed hillside with no protection.

Just because folk say you can't grow trees here, doesn't mean it's true.

 

More important than a dry stone dyke, is protection from the bunnies and the sheep.

[paulb]

true. do you know what they have used at michael's wood. do you think cherry plum would work as a shelter planting mixed with hazel and elder. we want to try some of the hardier fruit trees but it would be a miricle if that was to work.

[Ghostrider]

there are some that can cope with it. the aminity trust produced a guide to which would be best. there are trees that cope with simular climates in norway and alaska. you would need to form a shelter belt to get the best growth. a good dry stone dyke would be a good planting shelter.

 

There are some that can cope in selected locations in Shetland, Norway, Alsaka etc may have similarities in climate, but don't have the relentless westeries blasting spary ashore much of Shetland can get some winters, especially lethal in places like the south end where you have high sea cliffs and relatively flat land to leeward of them, each wave behaves like an explosion when it hits the cliff, and sends the spray straight up often as high above the cliff as the cliff itself, then the wind catches it, and drives it straight across the land until it deposits it in the North Sea at the east coast.

 

Certainly in places with reasonable natural shetler from the west and/or some distance and a lot of obstacles between them and where the main strength of the Atlantic is initially broken and the spray created, such as Tresta, the head of Weisdale etc, an amount of tree growth is feasible. such areas are in a very small minority though. Much of elsewhere, a wall will shelter growth to the wall height only, then you will start creating a strange lopsided bonzai effect from where the west side is fried off every year, and the tree has only be allowed to grow viably on its eastern half and at lower levels.

 

Among others I have a sycamore which was planted over 100 years ago, approx 4 foot from the east side of a 5 foot high stone wall, the cliffs to the west are about 1.5 miles away as the crow flies. Had it had a climate to grow successfully in it now would be a quite magnificant tree, as it is, the trunk is about 18 inches thick, but only about four feet tall. The branches heading westward and upwards go to wall height (as they did 50 years ago), but have never managed to get any higher. Instead the tree now slopes upwards at approx 30 degrees from wall height to its apex, which now exists around 10 feet east of perpendicular from the trunk. Lower growth on the east side, with branches at the trunk around 8-10 inches in diameter, extends now approx 15-20 feet eastwards and downwards to the point they drag on the ground. In section it resembles a lum with a thick pall of smoke heading eastward, not candly floss on a pole like it should.

[PJ of Hildisvik]

Ive planted 140 odd trees over the last 4 years.

 

Alaskan willow has downy underleaves, so is extremly salt tolerant, in British Columbia and coastal Alaska, its roots go into the sea.

Top quality moose food by the way!

 

Japanese larch

Alaskan shore pine

common Alder

sitka alder

Downy birch (shetland native)

 

all these do great in my patch which is 100m from the sea.

 

my willows are 12ft in 3 years.

 

Agood example of Alaskan willow can be found running along the fence of the campground at Clickamin loch.

 

Sheep and wabbits must be exterminated though

[paulb]

u nasty wabbit killer

http://www.alexross.com/Vr005.jpg

[PJ of Hildisvik]

^^^^^

[GT]

Salt spray and shelter have very little to do with lack of trees in Shetland – most of the gales that produce salt are accompanied by rain that washes off the salt. If wind-driven salt stops trees growing it would also stop grass and other crops from growing. The salt damaging gales to vegetation are the rare ones that occur in summer months without accompanying rain.

 

6000 or so years ago Shetland was pretty much covered in trees and these were cut down by man over the next 2000 years to claim the land for agriculture. Since then blanket bog has covered the upland areas due to soil degradation and you can’t grow trees on blanket bog (at least not without deep ploughing to any soil that may be beneath the bog). In fact there are many upland (and lowland) areas of Shetland where tree roots and branches are found beneath the bog.

 

Trees can grow quite happily on present day agricultural land in Shetland, but sheep, cattle and crops are much more profitable than trees so why plant them? (Unless you have a large government grant that is).

[stilldellin]

^ Not so common these days but we used to get winter south-east gales for weeks on end with virtually no rain at all but maybe some of you too young to remember. It would seem with the changing weather pattern that we are going to get ever increasing stormy weather albeit now usually accompanied with rain so the future of trees in especially exposed coastal areas of Shetland can not be good.

[GT]

^^

In fact the Met Office Climate Change models says that we will probably get wetter, milder winters but it may get less windy due to the fact that the poles are warming faster than equatorial regions thus decreasing the mid-latitude thermal gradient. Conversely because the troposphere is getting deeper, although we may get fewer storm centres, they may be more intense when they do occur.

 

Unfirtunately these Climate Models are not detailed enough to be specific about small aereas such as Shetland or even Scotland - it is also possible Scotland could get colder calmer winters due to winter high pressure areas shifting from polar regions to continental Europe - like last winter. This winter the continental high also happened but further east than last winter.