Fringford Cottage, Oxfordshire Case Study ~ Tree Planting Winter 2024/Winter 2025

Tree planting is generally best carried out in the winter when the trees are dormant, and there’s plenty of water around, so you don’t need to worry that they’ll dry out. But we’re forever seeing councils and housing developers planting in the spring, only to see come the autumn the trees have died due to a lack of water in the summer. You can plant at other times of the year, but watering is an absolute must. Our Fringford Cottage project took in many different disciplines including the creation of a 3.5 acre wildflower meadow, a 6m x 9m 3 bay compost bin, a log store, and over 200 trees of various varieties and sizes ranging up to 9 meters tall with 35cm trunk girth.

The first job was to remove a 90 meter long, 10 meter high Green Leyland Cypress hedge Cupressocyparis leylandii which can grow at nearly a meter per year, and needs constant maintenance, so can be an expensive choice, especially at 90 meters! As you can see from the pictures it was screening a number of houses, but never have neighbourly relations been better than when the light poured back into their houses. I should mention our clients had just bought the property, so weren't responsible for losing control of it!

We chipped all the branches on site, and made rough log piles at the very top of the field for insects and animals to inhabit. Then dug the stumps that need moving out with the digger, and left any that weren't in the way, cut off at the floor. Once the conifers were down and we could see what deciduous trees were left, things like Field Maple, Field Elm, Hawthorn and the likes, we were able to make a plan of what we needed to bring in. We’d already created a 40 tree strong Heritage Orchard sourced from the delightful, and local to site, Bernwode Fruit Trees. This was in the center of what we call the lower meadow, with the upper meadow being put to Wildflowers. From the orchard, the plan was to increase the height of the trees in layers, and have as many flowering and fruiting varieties as possible, so we would give the insects and birds as much variety as possible. So it was on to Barcham Trees, a little more locally being just outside Ely, where we went to do some serious tree shopping from their 150,000 stocked farm.

Having arrived on multiple articulated lorries, the first job was to get the trees into site, which meant through a neighbours farm gate and a 250 meter trek across their field to our landing site. No mean feet in itself due to the site being on clay, and mid winter! Once we had everything in and organised we could start planting. The first two layers of trees were a mix of white Crabapple, and pink Hawthorn, with a couple of Magnolias which had sentimental value. From there we moved up into two layers of mixed large white ornamental Cherries, Rowan of different colours, Liquid Ambar, Hornbeam, Oak, feathered Beech, Large multi-stem Silver Birch and a Scotts Pine.

Following that a low level line of 60 screening trees was added which contained Yews, multi-stem Rowan, multi-stem Silver Birch, feathered Hornbeam and Hazel which alongside a 90 meter trellis fence we installed blocked the view from a footpath running next to the site.

As well as planting mature trees around the boundary of the Wildflower Meadow, things like Lime, Ginkos, and Oaks amongst others, we also installed some huge Tulip trees to block a line of sight to a house from the main Wildflower vista. This was underplanted with Liquid Ambar which has branches starting much lower down the trunk than the Tulips.

We also installed a beautiful line of 4.5 meter holly closer to the house along a woven willow fence, with the plan to train them together to create a floating block of dark evergreen leaves. The willow fence was installed after the tree planting in the April. The key for our success is being able to pick the specific trees we want for the site, and our relationship with the likes of Barcham Trees really helps get it right from the outset.