Edinburgh horticultural business helps boost native-plant growth and biodiversity in Wales

Apr 2

2 min read

A container made by Edinburgh horticultural firm, Air-Pot®, has been chosen by horticultural experts running a Welsh-government-funded project in Wales, to help enrich the country’s native tree and plant populations and boost biodiversity.

The initiative in Denbighshire is run at a 70-acre tree nursery, which has already produced around 40,000 native trees and wildflowers with the help of a small volunteer team. The nursery has room to grow up to 300,000 more plants. The team harvests seeds from ancient and veteran trees, mostly from Denbighshire-council land, and also from National Trust properties.

Air-Pot® marketing and sales representative, Georgie Single said: “Our Air-Pot® systems were chosen for the programme as they focus on root establishment and ensuring healthier, more fibrous rootstock. Optimum results were Denbighshire’s motivating factor. They found that survival rates were better with Air-Pot®-grown plants.

Liam Blazey, chief biodiversity officer for Denbighshire council explained: “Currently, sadly, there’s very little biodiversity left in the UK. It ranks 189th out of 218 countries, so from a biodiversity perspective, we’re poor.

“Our project aims to restock some lost species and boost populations that are currently here. The life supported by trees is amazing. While we’ve initially focused on broad-leaf trees with Welsh provenance, we’ve also found some rarer trees like sorbus torminalis, commonly known as wild service, as well as black poplar and juniper.

“A single tree is an entire ecosystem and, once it’s planted out, it will live for more than 100 years. The amount of life you can get from that is incredible.

“For us, using Air-Pot® containers was all about the health of the plants and the sustainability they offer. They are reusable many times over, with no noticeable wear and tear, and the resulting plants, when planted out, are better able to cope with challenging growing conditions, due to the superior root systems they have developed.

“They also allow us to operate an easy maintenance programme depending on when we have volunteers to assist us, and they help us grow healthier plants by ensuring healthy roots. They stack well on tables with spacing between them. We’re now inviting other councils in Wales to see what we’re doing to encourage them to set up their own projects and nurseries too.”

www.air-pot.com