Easy treesy

EVERYONE should plant an arboretum. It doesn’t have to be a big one, but you should do it all the same. Start by planting a tree. Just one.

- Charles Quest-Ritson

Then plant some more. Different ones. After a while, you will discover that your single tree has turned into a copse, a woodland, an arboretum—a fascinating, personal collection of trees. Your very own terrestrial biome.

Trees are by far the most rewarding of garden plants. Easy maintenance is written into their very being. They are top-of-the-canopy plants. Some of them even exude chemicals that inhibit the development of rival plants. That makes them apex predators. The technical term is allelopathic. Walnut trees are a good example, but so are the tree of heaven, Ailanthus altissima, and the Canadian sugar maple, Acer saccharum: they keep their compe- titiveness by killing off their rivals. Rather like the mafia, you may suppose, although most trees and shrubs are not so murderous and tag along happily with everything else in the garden. Which means you can plant pretty woodland plants and bulbs underneath them —cyclamen, anemones, violets, pulmonarias and their like.