A celebration of Aberdeen’s elm trees
27/11/06
Youngsters will gather at a towering tree in a city park when they help launch a new publication on Aberdeen’s unique collection of elms.
Aberdeen’s specimens are among the best in the country and have largely escaped the ravages of the dreaded Dutch elm disease.
And schoolchildren from Seaton Primary will celebrate their own fine local specimen on Wednesday [November 29], when they join representatives of Aberdeen Countryside Project at Seaton Park to launch the new leaflet on the elm trees of the Granite City.
The Primary 3 youngsters will also team up with Donmouth city councillor Muriel Jaffrey, a director of ACP, to measure the height of the tallest Seaton Park specimen.
The new guide is an “elm tree trail”, showing people where to find the many different varieties of elm in Aberdeen – from the tallest to the oldest to the most unusual – and explains why this type of tree is important to the city.
The leaflet highlights five areas of the city where a variety of elms can be seen, including:
- Seaton Park where one of the city’s tallest elm trees grows, measuring 94 feet high;
- Aberdeen Art Gallery, which has four fine specimens of smooth-leaved elm outside its entrance;
- St Nicolas Kirk where four kinds of elm grow, including a Camperdown elm with its characteristic corkscrew branches.
The leaflet is the second in a series of three leaflets highlighting the heritage trees of Aberdeen. The first – Old Aberdeen’s Heritage Tree Trail – has proved so popular with locals and visitors that it has already had to be reprinted. The last in the series will be on the heritage trees in the city as a whole.
The Elm Tree Trail forms part of a much larger three-year project entitled “Aberdeen Community Trees”, which promotes all aspects of trees in the city.
Aberdeen is fortunate to have retained its elm trees, while many cities throughout the world have lost theirs because of Dutch elm disease – a virulent disease caused by a fungus and spread via a bark beetle visiting the trees in summer.
The community trees project is being delivered through two consultant ecologists, Geoff Banks and John Malster. It is funded by Fresh Futures and Aberdeen City Council through the City Growth Fund and co-ordinated by Aberdeen Countryside Project.
John Malster said: “The parks and streets of Aberdeen have some of the finest elm trees of any city in Britain. This leaflet is an introduction to the trees for the people of Aberdeen and its visitors. I hope it will raise awareness of their importance and the need to continue to look after them.”
ACP chief officer Alister Clunas said: “We are delighted to have been involved in delivering this project to raise awareness of the importance of trees in the city. Too often we take trees for granted. Imagine a city stripped of all its trees – it would be a desolate and unpleasant place to live.
“We need to value trees in the city through protecting old trees from damage and ensuring new ones are planted to replace those reaching the end of their lives.”
The Aberdeen Community Trees initiative is highlighting the importance of trees by:
- creating wildlife areas in schools using native trees;
- carrying out tree-planting on private land;
- producing three Aberdeen tree trails, promoting heritage trees in the city;
- operating a tree warden scheme to safeguard trees; the warden is trained in tree identification and the law relating to trees, and attends events and workshops in the city.
Aberdeen Countryside Project is a local environmental charity, funded mainly through the landfill tax. It works with local communities to secure environmental improvements to green spaces in Aberdeen through improved access, planting native trees and shrubs, and interpretative material on the natural environment.
