A Gardener’s Miscellany
This week it’s:
National Tree Week
We look at plants that are the lungs of the planet
NATIONAL Tree Week, the UK’s largest annual tree celebration, starts this Saturday, 27 November. It was first held in 1975, and every November since it has marked the start of the winter tree-planting season; the ideal time for planting trees (whether they’re sold in containers or bare-root) is during their five-month dormant period between
November and March. This is, therefore, the perfect time to take a look at trees in general – and there are some fascinating stats and facts!
National Tree Week is organised by The Tree Council, an organisation that brings together individuals and communities ‘with a shared mission to care for trees and our planet’s future’. For more details on the council’s work (and the ‘Week’), visit treecouncil.org.uk.
The world’s tree problem
BEFORE humans evolved, there were an estimated six trillion trees on the planet. Today there is half this number (according to a study). And, while this sounds like it isn’t anything to worry about, their distribution around the world is a problem. Around half of the world’s forests are in just five countries: Russia, Canada, Brazil, the USA and China. Most historians estimate that before Man, the world’s forests took up around 6 billion hectares of land. Today, only a fraction of that remains, with the loss being attributed to intensive agricultural practices and modern civilisation infrastructure. The world loses nearly 10 billion trees each year.
