Garden Centre

Monday, September 24, 2007

It’s that time of year …

Conkers! When I was a kid I used to soak them in vinegar and bake them in the oven and then use them to bash other kid’s conkers. I never got past the first round though …

These days I gather up all the conkers I can find for a different reason – I plant them. Most of them I just ease into the ground about a couple of hundred yards from the parent tree, but some of them I bring home and raise in pots.

I’m about to make a terrible confession – I’m a guerrilla tree-planter! Yes, every year between November and March I go out with a bunch of like-minded activists and plant saplings in a place where we think they stand a chance of growing into trees. Let’s be honest, it’s not exactly world-changing, but on the other hand, if you’ve ever tried to get your local council to replace a tree that’s died, or been vandalised, you will know that tree-planting is an aspect of life that most politicians at the local level view with complete suspicion. ‘Unsafe’, they say, or ‘too close to buildings’ or ‘blocks the view of the road’ or ‘may drop leaves on the pavement’.

So my baby horse chestnuts, oaks, and so on will mysteriously appear one winter’s day in a place where there used to be a tree but no longer is. I think of it as my Mother Christmas act and there’s something pretty wonderful about knowing that when I’m long gone, some of my ‘babies’ will be going strong.

To grow conkers, just stick them in a pot and put them in a reasonably sheltered area, and forget about them apart from making sure they don’t dry out entirely. In anything from six to sixteen months you will see the shoots appear.

Labels: growing from seed, guerilla gardening, horse chestnuts, tree plantring

The All Seasons Gardener at 11:43 PM

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