Aren't trees amazing?

[Dilbertian]

A massive horse chestnut tree was cut down over 10y ago, and the stump has been quietly rotting away ever since.

This year it has grown leaves and little branches!

I love that, nature always finds a way!

They are indeed! So glad it's replenishing, hope it's left alone to re grow.

My DH "pollarded" i.e. massacred our fruit trees 2 years ago and they have barely recovered since. I'm so cross as I love the blossom more than the fruit and spring isn't the same without them

Oh no! I'd be gutted, like you I love the blossom more, we've got 3 blossom producing trees in our garden now (one may be a large shrub?) and DH is talking about getting a fourth as he knows how much I love them

I have a flowering cherry and I love blossom time. It’s just finished flowering now. This time of year, with their new leaves, the trees look so fresh and the green is a lovely shade.

I hope your trees recover, Freya. The street trees here are brutally pollarded every 10y or more, and look dire in the first summer afterwards , but they recover within the next couple of years.

Pics of the not-dead-after-all stump:

I love trees too! We had our ash tree “crowned?” To give it shape and thin out the bulk. I felt like we’d given it a spa day!

There was a large Poplar tree in our garden that had been there years ( long before us) new neighbours asked to chop it down and offered to pay . Sadly we agreed as it was too close to the house . It’s been chopped down to a stump and poisoned twice and still puts it green shoots . It’s amazing!

Trees are wonderful.

unless you live next to them when you have 36 huge gardening bags of leaves to take to the tip every Autumn and their roots come up through your lawn and the bird shit covers your car in Spring.

and then there’s the sycamore boomerangs that root every autumn and shoot up in their 1000s in the spring and if you blink and miss one then it’s a small tree by Autumn.

then there’s the Apple and plum trees that are beautiful right now but come October I can’t give the fruit away or reach the top ones so they rot on the trees.

trees are amazing - just make sure you live at least 500 yards from one.

(lighthearted)

I was in Richmond Park recently and saw the Royal Oak, which is estimated to be around 750 years old. So it germinated about the time Henry III died and Edward I Longshanks became king, long before Charles I made Richmond a Royal Park in 1626

So many people on the street where I live hsve chopped trees down completely. Very sad. Where do they think the insects and birds will go. They are indeed beautiful and amazing

They are great providers of oxygen as well!!

Gazillions of gardening bags of leaves to take to the tip every Autumn - check.
Roots coming up through the lawn - check.
Bird shit on the car - check.
Cherry, apple and hawthorn seeds root every spring and shoot up in their 1000s in the spring and if you blink and miss one then it’s a small tree by Autumn - check.
My neighbour's apple and plum trees that lean over my fence, and whose fruit he allows me to pick if it's my side but I can’t give the fruit away or reach the top ones so they rot on the trees and in the beds, inviting wasps - check.
My other neighbour's massive conifers that he does cut down to a mere 3-4m every few years, but nonetheless reach their branches over our roof and block our gutters - check.

And still I wouldn't have it any other way except maybe the gutter blocking conifers. We lost the only mature tree in our garden when a storm blew it down a few years ago. Heartbreaking.

They are absolutely amazing, the way they change with the seasons, weather the storms, are a haven for wildlife, produce oxygen, give shade and l love the sound of my weeping birch in the breeze.

Nooooo compost the leaves to make leaf mould.

They're sooo amazing!

Lifelong tree hugger here, they're very good for the soul too :)

I once made the mistake of parking under a tree with purple berries overnight, came back to a car half covered in bright purple birdshit 😱

Thank you, he just needs to leave them alone but seems to think he’s saving them by butchering them every year! I’m sure pollarding isn’t done annually. We are lucky to have trees all around the garden but not sure these ones will recover and the woodpeckers haven’t nested in them since

In 5 minutes. Trees are amazing. The biggest living organism is an Elm tree - something like 60 miles long bent into hedgerows and saplings. Ash trees - how did they ever know how to make aerodynamic keys well before rotor blades? I sat in a garden last week for an hour and watched over 40 different bird species fly into the canopy of a cedar tree - a metropolis for birds, insects and mammals. Sit under a large old forest tree and smell the air around you - it is intoxicating and an oxygen-chlorophyll rush. Don't trim the shoots at ground level on holly, laurel, yew or bay trees - wrens find sanctuary in those places.

A good holiday read this year:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overstory