O Tannenbaum! Wie treu sind deine Blatter!*
Christmas is a time for traditions isn't it, and one tradition which we hold dear in the Hopkinson family is that of the Christmas tree. Every year I say to the wife, “I'll go and bring one back from the field in France,” and in the true spirit of Christmas she always replies, “no ___ing chance!”
Readers of the Grumpy Gardener's Handbook will know that I am a big fan of Buckingham Nursery and their annual tree and hedging catalogue. To me its arrival generates the same kind of excitement I experienced as a child getting hold of the Matchbox or Scalextric catalogue. 'Wo! I can get five Abies nordmanniana for just 79p each!' And right from the time I had a field to plant them in, I would pore over its pages working out which trees I wanted to buy.
Many a wet and windy windswept afternoon in February was spent digging in some bare-rooted plants that had arrived in the archaically packaged cardboard box, strengthened with canes, bundled in twine and packed with straw. You expected to get one of those packing slips inside stating – ‘this parcel packaged by Wurzel Gummidge’.
When they changed to strengthened boxes and cable ties it just wasn't the same.
The field must be over an acre and I planted alders, field maples, birch, larch, yew (for a special yew tunnel I wanted to grow, not thinking it would ever be achievable) planes, poplars, a crataegous Paul's Scarlet, an amelanchier lamarckii, a few acers, and I also thought it might be fun to plant a few serbian spruce and some firs for future Christmas trees.
The early years for many of these trees was tough. In Brittany, things grow very quickly thanks to the combination of mild winters and warm wet summers. Think Cornwall, but think Cornwall XL. In these conditions, grass and weeds thrive, and with no cows grazing the field any more, the vegetation sprang up all around to engulf these poor 1- to 2-feet trees that were struggling to establish a root system let alone reach for the sky.
I spent the first three or four summers going round uncovering and rescuing the trees from their grassy, weedy entombment every two months. Some were difficult to find despite the clearance zone and the mulch mat surrounds. The taller ones with the tree stakes had it easy as they were bought at 3- to 4-feet and were fairly quick to locate.
The poor Christmas trees were only supplied small and you could stand on one and not know it was there. Often when I was scything my way around, in a precursor to that Poldark scene, I would find an odd bit of conifer cutting and realise I had found it. Think that scene in Wind in the Willows when Mole and Rat are in the Wild Wood and stumble on Badger’s doorstep in the snow, except in the middle of a field, in Brittany, in summer, with a conifer.
Their growth over the years was haphazard, so they never achieved the perfectly forested shape typical of Christmas trees on sale at the garden centre. Thus they gained the serial rejection they have now got used to. And I stopped visiting.
Fast forward to late November 2016 and I journeyed to the bottom of the field to see if one of them had filled out and was shocked to find how much they had grown. Two that survived from the 1990s are about 20 metres tall and unphotographable. Three I must have planted about 10 years ago are now 5-6 metres, repaying all those afternoons spent chopping away brambles that were trying to get an aerial foothold.
They looked so great I wanted to chop one down on the spot.
Next year it would definitely be fun to have a Trafalgar Square-sized tree in the front garden. That might be a first in Southborough. Though finding a big enough base at Squires might be a problem…
*Oi Tannenbaum, how loyal are your leaves.
