Growing up fast

This blog post was written by Jess, who heads up our horticultural efforts (as well help with lots of other stuff!)

Things are moving fast at our nursery project.  It’s been busy here at Cefn Garthenor and the nursery is now filled with thousands of seedlings. The monumental task of potting is nearing completion, just in time for us to start all over again with this year's inundation of seeds, which I have already begun to collect. The nursery has evolved from being an empty field and a few sketches to a field that looks and functions as a plant nursery filled with thousands of seedlings, each of which will eventually need a new home.

Common alder coming up in the seed trays (seed collected on 21/10/24, planted on 26/3/25, photo 13/8/25 ... these are seed trays 1 and 2 of 5)

In my last blog, I mentioned the vast quantities of seed collected, which have now begun germinating. Over winter, we all held our breath, hoping for good germination rates. The stratification fridge spent the winter absolutely rammed with seed, and I am pleased to announce that the fridge is now empty, and our seed beds are now full of baby trees.

January 2025

Much of this year has been spent building the infrastructure ready for when all that seed collected last autumn begins to germinate. Seed beds have been built from cattle troughs and rodent-proof frames are now up, protecting our tiny trees from any cheeky critters having a nibble. Our beautiful polytunnel has already had a lot of use and currently houses the first of the green hazelnuts collected for this year, hopefully soon turning brown, getting ready for planting. This year, unlike last, the trees are heavy with acorns, so you can anticipate seeing large numbers of baby oak trees in the nursery in the coming years!

Cattle feeding troughs re-purposed, with home made protection ... and John starting to plant seeds

Now planted up, our willow coppice will restock willow available for sale in our shop in coming years. (Fun side note - our willow will likely be put to good use to lure Steve and Doris, our reintroduced beavers, in front of the cameras).

Water filled willow beds and new roots from the willow cuttings

Over winter, we planted up our Welsh heritage orchard, filled with rare Welsh varieties of apple. Once they've had a few years to establish themselves, we hope to take cuttings to graft onto M25 rootstock, which will then eventually be made available to purchase from our nursery. We will keep you posted as this exciting project develops.

Jess processing rowan seed ... it is often necessary to extract and then dry the seed from berries

Since the last blog post, the nursery has seen the full spectrum of weather, deep snow, heavy rainfall, and storm Darragh, which thankfully the new polytunnel survived through. But now, we are dealing with the results of the most recent extreme … 2025 has seen the driest spring in over 100 years, and the warmest since records began. All followed by what is predicted to be the UK’s hottest summer on record. The unusually high temperatures in Wales have made things challenging, with rain being very sparse. To try and mitigate this, we have installed a gutter system on the polytunnel to harvest rainfall, which has never felt more important. The below-average rainfall we have seen this summer at Cefn Garthenor might explain why we are seeing signs of a ‘false autumn’, with the stress causing a lot of the trees to lose their leaves earlier than expected. I am already seeing signs this has pushed forward the tree seed collection timeline this year.

This year's drought summer and the stress it placed on trees may have contributed to the false autumn

Last year, my focus was on trees, creating a map of trees on site, ready for last autumn's seed collecting. Now that I have a handle on the tree side of things, I'm excited to be shifting the focus to wildflowers. Work has now begun on creating a new map of wildflowers at Cefn Garthenor. Wildflowers like Devil's Bit Scabious, Whorled Caraway, Yellow Rattle, Ragged Robin, Great Burnet, Bog Asphodel, Marsh Cinquefoil, Common Valerian, Hemp-agrimony… the list goes on and on…  The task of collecting seeds has begun, and our catalogue of wildflower seeds is growing, and soon, so shall the wildflowers as we begin the process of propagation in the nursery.

Wild flowers are now in focus: left Great Burnet, right Whorled Caraway

Last year's hunt for wild service trees saw success, seeds germinated, and our 2 wild service trees are growing strong. This year, the plan is to scale up, with a better handle on germination rates and how to go forward; it can only get better from here.

Species which will be available - all of Seed Zone 303 Provenance. So far, we have successfully grown the following:

Hawthorn Grown from seed

Blackthorn Grown from seed/softwood cutting

Hazel Grown from seed

Rowan Grown from seed

Elder Grown from cuttings

Common alder Grown from seed

Spindel Grown from seed

Broom Grown from seed

Dog rose Grown from seed

Wild service tree Grown from seed, Limited stock

Our first batch of trees (not accounting for any potential disasters ... let's say no to those!) will hopefully be available to purchase from Autumn 2026 onwards, with delivery between November 2026 - February 2027.

Nuts ... hazelnuts in various stages of preparation