They’re cutting our ash trees down today

The tree surgeons have started cutting our dead ash trees down - dieback. Two huge ones and a couple of middle-sized ones. I’m unexpectedly tearful. After all they’ve been dead for a while. One huge one frames the house as you come down the farm track. Nut hatches were nesting in it last year, but luckily not this year. OH wants to not replace it to make mowing easier. I’m not sure if it would even be a good idea anyway. Maybe there’s a spark of life in there and it might sprout from the stump (straw-clutching!). On a more cheerful note, the other huge one (coming down as I type), has a completely healthy ash right next to it. I’ve been looking at it with the binoculars, and there are healthy leaves right at the tips. If it is resistant, it’s the only one out of about 10.

 

It's always sad to see landmark trees go.

 

I know how you feel. When we moved here there were two large twin trunked ashes. Sadly about seven years ago the female showed signs of Chalara confirmed by an arboriculturist so it was felled. There was a silver lining in that it no longer shaded or sucked the moisture out of the veg patch and, as it was the female we wouldn’t have the usual masses of seedlings to deal with.
The other tree (male) showed no signs of dieback so we had it re-pollarded and it continued to do well. Then following the drought of 2018 it began to struggle … it’s on a bank so in a dry spot anyway … we had several years of sparser foliage than usual but no actual dieback . The arboriculturist suggested that re-pollarding would lessen the demand on the roots and give it a chance to recover so that’s what we had done last October… our fingers are crossed for signs of new growth this year …

pollarding in progress.

 

That’s a thought @Dovefromabove. I’ll keep a close eye on the healthy ash and if it show signs of struggling, I’ll suggest that idea. It would be great to be able to keep one going for the species.

 

My fingers are tightly crossed as we have a multi stemmed ash growing in a bank and a seedling, now a tall 20ft specimen further down the garden, both looking very healthy. I have been keeping an eye on both of them in case of disease as a lot of ash have died around the village green only a mile or so up the road.

 

The ash trees in the scrub at the back of me have Ash dieback you can see the dead fingers reaching out of the crown. I drew the owners attention to it a couple of years ago and they said they were aware of it and didn't have to do anything until 60% of the crown was affected and they were more concerned with the ash trees in the publicly accessible areas.

 

One point made on Countryfile a few programmes back was that dead Ash trees only need felling when they present a danger to people or property. Even dead they are a valuable habitat for lots of wild life.
And, yes, I know, when they have to go, they have to go.

 

Lots of ash trees in our plot, both in the boundary tree and hedgerow as well as freestanding.

We had two very big ones felled after our first year here - 13 months of drought stressed them and strong winds would always mean another large branch or two falling. They were too close to the house to risk leaving them.

The surgeon checked two other very mature trees growing on the edge of our large, unlined pond so better access to moisture, even in a drought. He trimmed a few branches and said they'd be OK a while. 6 years later they are OK, tho one is very late to leaf up this year.

We also have healthy younger trees so, one way or another, we'll have ash trees for a while here which is great as they are used as perches by herons and buzzards as well as the usual garden and rural suspects. Presumably home to insects too.

 

We had an enormous ash tree in our garden which I absolutely loathed. It had to come down due to heart rot and I found myself surprisingly emotional when I saw it in pieces. The garden didn't look right without a tree so a replaced it with a small maple but that didn't last long though. For reasons unknown, it went into decline and I found myself rather tearful again when that had to come out. Replaced it with a hawthorn which has now been in the ground for almost 5 years and seems to be doing OK. It's very strange how trees can make you emotional.