Interesting Job To Save An Enormous London Plane Tree
In this post, join our managing director as we look at a recent job we did at Cliveden House on The Thames in Buckinghamshire.
Video Transcript
So this London plane is absolutely enormous. Josh is, I reckon, six foot two which gives you the scale and size of it. Totally hollow, and its in a really sheltered spot. We’re trying to encourage some aerial root growth.
So a massive London plane tree here with a big cavity. Here’s our tree consultant, Guy, and we are trying to encourage these aerial roots to grow down and form a new, effectively a new cambium trunk layer of this tree. So we’re going to grow them down these pipes.
There are more here, you can see how thick they have already become. So the idea is to try and get that to root to the bottom.
So the tubes are filled with this mixture of local soil, grit and vermiculite to encourage the root growth down those tubes and the tubes have been split in half so we can open them up and see if it’s working and hopefully we get two big ariel roots developing across that cavity, because that cavity you can see daylight the other side its completely hollow.
So we finished the works to this yesterday, and we have these three sections. This is a bit of experimental tree work, but what we’ve done is the aerial roots go down these tubes, and so we’re encouraging them to grow into the ground to form three big functional columns that basically go over this massive cavity.
So these two have just got aerial roots growing into them, and the truss will now keep that damp. This one’s a bit of an experiment of two, so we’ve got aerial roots going into the top coming down, and then we’ve almost hedge laid or folded over a piece of side growth, and now we’re hoping that’s goning to root in this material here, and then grow all the way into the ground as well, which will make up for this compromised buttress root here.
So an exciting little project and hopefully, effectively a new form of tree work for closing off cavity openings.
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