Island’s historic spruce is named nation’s top tree
IT was once the only tree on its remote island home, planted more than 100 years ago.
Now, the cherished spruce on Eriskay, South Uist, has been named Scotland’s Tree of the Year.
Netty’s Tree was planted by Father Allan MacDonald, a poet, priest and land rights activist who lived on the island, in the Outer Hebrides, until his death in 1905.
It was named after a crofter, Netty MacDonald, who lived near the spot where the spruce took root and who encouraged children to climb and play in the tree.
The Tree of the Year contest, run by The Woodland Trust, celebrates the UK’s best-loved trees, from historic giants to those with a special local story.
The winners from Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales were announced live on BBC One’s The One Show last night.
A vote organised by the programme will now decide the UK’s contender in the European Tree of the Year competition, to be held in February. Netty’s Tree is up against Nellie’s Tree, in Aberford, near Leeds, a beech which was grafted into an N-shape to woo a woman named Nellie back in the 1920s.
Northern Ireland’s winner is a sequoia with 19 trunks in County Down, while Wales’s top tree is the Pwllpriddog Oak in Carmarthenshire, believed to have been planted to commemorate the Battle of Bosworth.