New BS proposed to Help Protect Young Trees

Nurturing Nature: BS8545 Young Trees: From The Nursery Through To Independence In The Landscape: A Continuous Process

In 2008 the Government published Trees in Towns II – a follow up to the 1992 research on urban trees. Within the document was the statistic that, on average, 25% of young trees planted into the landscape fail. This was perhaps the spark which led to Keith Sacre (Sales Director at Barcham Trees) proposing that a new British Standard should be developed to help protect young trees and emphasise that the transition from the nursery into the landscape is a continuous process.

The scope for the new standard was proposed to The British Standards Institute (BSi) last year and the standard BS 8545 is now under consultation by a BSi committee.

Concentrating on nursery trees from 8-10 cm girth upwards, the standard is envisaged as a comprehensive flow chart beginning with the nursery production system through to independence in the landscape; the purpose being to highlight best practice for any particular methodology or production process. The proposed scope of the standard can be summarised as follows:

SECTION 1: Nursery Methods

• Impartially outline the advantages and disadvantages of current tree nursery production methods, describe best practice and introduce specifiable criteria for each.
• Expand upon specifiable morphological parameters/characteristics currently in use; introduce criteria for a nursery benchmark of tree health.

SECTION 2: Despatch and storage

•  Detail current best practice in despatching and transporting young trees
• Describe pre-transplant storage practices and the impact these have on transplanting success.

SECTION 3: Transplanting

• Identify current best practice and recommendations for transplanting, including support systems, tree pit design, structural soils and other backfill mediums.
• Consider the use of nutrient supplements and mychorrizal inoculations, when, how and of what value such supplements offer in enhancing transplanting success.

 SECTION 4: Post planting maintenance

• Review the use of mulches, post planting watering regimes and the impact of herbicide, competition, grass management and soil compaction.
• Define the use of plant health assessment, measured against a nursery benchmark, to evaluate and identify stresses post transplanting allowing remedial action to be taken early.

SECTION 5: Formative pruning

• Describe the aims and objectives of current best practice of formative pruning and how this relates back to nursery practice.

The proposed standard is to be aimed at all professionals involved in the process of handling young trees from the nursery into the landscape. The first stage in an ongoing consultation process has just been completed by many such professionals and considered why plants might fail. The results, together with future consultations will help inform the BSi committee and hopefully lead to the production of this good practice guidance ensuring that plant failures on schemes are reduced and young trees develop into well-formed, healthy specimens.