WEE TREE KINGS

The crusade to plant more trees.

AFTER fitting our new front door, the joiner left behind the broken up sections of the old door and its frame for use on the log burner.

When he returned a few weeks later to fit the bookshelves, I mentioned to him how well they had burnt.

“So they should,” he said. “They were solid mahogany.”

Tropical hardwoods don’t find their way into our log basket very often. Most of our wood comes from local beech and birch trees that have fallen in high winds or been removed because of disease.

Yet despite being surrounded by trees I’m thinking of planting more, not forest giants but small and dainty trees with slender stems and fine branches that will cast a delicate tracery of shade over the plants beneath them.

I can’t plant them until the new borders go in, but as my friend Dianne used to say when she dragged me into expensive stores when we didn’t have the price of the bus fare home: “It’s never too early to get your eye in.”

So far, my list includes crab apples, flowering cherries, white-stemmed birches and the lovely weeping silver pear tree, pyrus salicifolia pendula.

If you are thinking of planting a Kilmarnock willow – don’t. Plant this instead. It does the same job only much, much better.

Of course, as Halloween approaches, the sensible choice would be a rowan. The Auld Kirk at Alloway lies just a mile away and the tales that inspired Burns to write Tam O’Shanter were based on local legends of harpies flying over the Carrick Hills on brooms.

During the 17th Century, 27 women were tried at the Tolbooth in Ayr on accusations of witchcraft.

In his new book, Scottish Plant Lore, Gregory Kenicer of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh describes rowan as “one of the classic occult plants in Scotland”, saying it is connected with witchcraft and the faerie folk and that even today a rowan tree is still planted in front gardens to ward off witches.

I’m not convinced that in this part of Scotland one tree would be enough, but then I’ve always thought that rowans were improved by being grown in small groves of three or more.

Amelanchier or “snowy mespilus” is popular for growing among flowers. Its only drawback is its young foliage is bronze whilst I prefer leaves to be green in spring.

They don’t come greener than hawthorn, which opens its zingy buds while all else is still bare twigs. Any of the pink-flowered varieties would do just fine.

And lilac would also be a contender, but it grows from a mat of dense, shallow roots which make underplanting difficult.

But I am keen on the birch bark cherry, prunus serrula, which has flowers like white confetti and bark the colour of polished mahogany.

This time, though, I only want to grow it, not burn it.