Anna Ritchie visited Saltwood Lads’ Club Hall to update our group of 20 attendees on the progress of the project to reintroduce Elm trees to the Kent landscape.
Plan Tree has continued to make progress during 2025, albeit with a smaller team and with greater funding challenges. These headwinds notwithstanding the team has continued to plant 12,000 whips, over 200 fruit trees and disease resistant elms.
The focus was on elms, starting with the different disease-resistant hybrids that have been developed. Amongst those available there are different shapes (a more upright nature being easier to use as an urban tree) and those happier in different soil conditions.
Many more sites of surviving elm had been recorded during 2025, building a picture to help plan useful planting to bridge gaps between recognised elm sites and establishing wildlife corridors.
The elm planting, both reintroducing that historically important tree to our Kent countryside and providing a critical environment for the survival and proliferation of at least 2 butterfly species: White-letter hairstreak and Large Tortoiseshell.
The Large Tortoiseshell had been thought extinct in the UK until recently; it may have migrated from Europe and have found the environment in the UK more supportive with warmer weather conditions. Anna reported the growing number of sightings recorded across Kent; we were asked to continue to report both that sites of existing elm trees and any sightings of either of the two specific butterflies mentioned above.
With these encouraging conservation messages in mind, there were question from an engaged audience before departing with thanks to Anna for her time.
