Yesterday we planted out nine young native Black Poplar trees at Marston Marshes, a local nature reserve on the southern edge of Norwich, by the River Yare.

The trees were grown from cuttings taken from trees in Earlham Cemetery in Norwich in March 2014. Members of Friends of Earlham Cemetery potted up the cuttings and looked after them and by the end of last year we had ten healthy, well established trees. We used deep pots, used for growing climbers, to give the trees a good root depth. As the trees like wet conditions, we stood the pots in seed trays full of water and this has encouraged good root growth.

The tenth tree is going to be planted at Tyrrel’s Wood, a Woodland Trust reserve near Long Stratton in South Norfolk, to replace a large native Black Poplar that was blown down in a gale earlier this winter.

We have been given permission to take more cuttings and plan to do this in the next few weeks, which we hope will produce another set of rooted trees by early 2018.

Read more about native Black Poplars and the Friends of Earlham Cemetery Black Poplar Project here.