Yesterday at 11 a very friendly courier arrived with a pallet full of trees and tree guards, as part of our tree order from the Woodland Trust for the Secret Campsite. With all of the bad stories in the news about the ash dieback disease, Chalara fraxinea, waiting to sweep across the country we have some good news for our nature loving campers. We have qualified for a grant from the Trust to plant 500 native edible trees throughout our campsite. The species we have chosen will start producing their delicious offering from next Spring in the form of young lime leaves from the Small leaved Lime tree Tilia cordata. These small leaves form the base of a delicious forest garden salad, and we will manage the trees as they grow so that none are over harvested until they reach a reasonable age and are ready for pollarding. We already have a number of small but established lime trees on the site and these will provide the majority of the leaves we use in our Spring salads here at our campsite in Sussex.
Our list includes the following native edible plant species, Rowan, Hazel, Walnut, Sweet Chestnut, Elder, Dog rose, Blackthorn, Wild Cherry, Bird cherry, Small leaved lime, Crab apple and Whitebeam. I’ll look forward to discussing our edible plants with you when you come to stay with us at our campsite a few miles from Lewes.
The trees have been heeled in and will be planted over the Christmas holidays. Feel free to pop along and watch us planting lunches, salads, cordials and fruit jellies for future campers.
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