His Majesty The King

Barcham was honoured by a private visit from His Majesty The King!

We were all very thrilled to show His Majesty The King around Barcham on Monday. The private tour included a walk through our potting barn and young tree production area and culminated with His Majesty planting an Acer platanoides Princeton Gold to mark the start of the main avenue in our newly forming arboretum. On our walk back we stopped off to see a batch of recently potted Fotheringhay Oak in 45 litre containers; we collected the acorns from this tree six years ago.

His Majesty was quick to engage in conversations with many of our staff along the way so there were many cherished memories of the day!

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ISO, the tool we never knew we needed!

Having just completed our certification for ISO 45001 it made me think of the journey we have been on with ISO and the realization that actually our starting point for gaining the standard was actually further back then we realized.

Back in the summer of 2018 we decided as a business we wanted to strengthen our Environmental credentials and push the business further forward with its environmental responsibilities, this proved to be no mean feat and required us to produce a management system which would allow us to track all of the required environmental data and have policies and procedures in place which would help us to react to this information and continually improve our system and indeed the business.

We successfully completed our certification to ISO 14001 within a year of starting it, we were very happy with the results and Environmental success this brought to the business.  Then, however something unexpected happened, the tools and focus we applied to our management system began to cross into other areas of the business, communication and engagement within our team improved, people felt more and more part of the business and it seemed pretty simple with the team we had in place, we were hooked!

Fast forward to 2021 and we began to think could this system also be used to manage our teams Health, Safety & Wellbeing?  The business had grown considerably and as such become even busier and potentially hazardous to our teams and anyone visiting the site.

So, we discussed completing the ISO 45001 standard which covers all aspects of Occupational Health and Safety.  Looking through the standard this would be no mean feat as this standard is known for being particularly tough and would require some considerable resources to enable us to gain certification.

We launched a briefing road show with our teams completed by the Senior Leadership Team and mixed groups of 8 or so in order to explain to everyone what the business wanted to achieve and what this would mean to everyone, the response from the team was excellent and so we pushed forward with our plan.

A year later following many, many procedures, working groups and training it was time for our Certification Audits, three of them and four different auditors, this could certainly be classified as a full-on process.  However, we successfully completed our audits and received our certification with flying colors!

And whilst the overall OH&S context was important to us the hidden benefits were beyond expectations helping the business to become more agile, communicate with our teams more effectively and perhaps most importantly giving all off our team a voice for any concerns they may have.

So, we now have a great business management tool at the heart of both our ISO Certifications which is something we never realized would be so beneficial, who knows where ISO will take us next…

Paul Thurman-Carvey

Retail Director (Management Representative ISO)

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Her Majesty the Queen

Such sad news about the passing of our beloved Queen yesterday. A great Lady who will be sadly missed at Barcham.
We will be planting an Acer campestre Queen Elizabeth in our Arboretum this autumn to honour and cherish her memory.
As Warrant Holder to Her Majesty the Queen we were and will forever remain extremely proud of this association.
Our heart felt condolences go to The Royal Family for their loss.

 

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The importance of mulch!

An extract from Time for Trees – edition 04 written by our managing director, Mike Glover.

A good width of organic mulch around a newly planted tree is a great way of keeping competitive weed growth at bay and creating a buffer zone of retained moisture at soil level.

Ground based organisms travel up through the soil and into the mulch to feed before returning, keeping the top of the soil moist. A mulch also gives a wealth of fungal activity, re-creating an abundance of balanced activity associated with woodland floors.

Trees have evolved to thrive with this balance in place. But we have a tendency to spoil this party. So often I see trees surrounded with decorative rocks, coloured stone chips, an array of plastic liners, decking or even concrete, paving slabs, or tarmac. These non-organic coverings can entomb a tree to a life of slow failure. They can deprive the soil of water, killing off the balancing life in the soil that a tree needs to thrive. They are sterile, not organic, the opposite to a woodland floor. They can reflect both heat and light back into the canopy of the tree with scorching effects. Trees haven’t evolved with these inorganic decorations so it’s not surprising they do poorly under such circumstances. Trees don’t want hygiene, they want a balanced blend of organisms to support them.

Mulch is definitely the way to go but there can be too much of a good thing. Somewhere around four to six centimetres of mulch spread over a metre diameter and pulled out from around the trunk of the tree is enough to do the job. This will need topping up every season as it degrades. It is tempting to put a greater depth of mulch on but again, beware of deviating away from what nature intended.

The closer we can mimic nature the more your trees will thrive.

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New Despatch Yard

At Barcham we’re currently working towards the ISO 45001 standard – Health and Safety Management. In doing this, our despatch yard has seen the biggest number of improvements! 😀

It has been completely re-surfaced, with thanks to John Meredith (Meredith Farmers Ltd).

There is now a new barrier in use at the entrance to the yard to help control the traffic. A new one way traffic system and pedestrian walkway has been put in place. Something to please be aware of on your scheduled visits to Barcham. As always, a Hi Vis must be worn at all times out on the yard and nursery. 🦺

We’ve also put in a new raised platform for loading vehicles from www.davidharrisons.com 😊

 

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Another year passed!

Back in December we had our yearly external audit for ISO 14001. We are very pleased to have passed another year and remain ISO14001 certified. 😀

During this time our system is thoroughly checked, and key members of the team spoken to around what we do and how we manage our Environmental Management System.

ISO14001 is an Environmental Certification which asks you to consider, control or reduce your Environmental Impact by using an Environmental Management System.

For us, this environmental standard goes hand in hand with our product and what we are trying to achieve for the wider environment!

 

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What’s going on at Barcham?

Many of you may already be aware or maybe you have seen the work going on as you pass us on the A142 in Ely.

We’re developing a 16 acre showcase garden with a range of our stock and the photo below is a concept drawing of what we hope to achieve 🤞

Our aim is to not only help give you a better idea of what our stock can look like as it matures, but to also show you some of the different kind of purposes the trees can be used for. Right tree, right place! 🌳

The area will also consist of a new lake, a large play area and a retail shop with a café 😊

We’d love to bring you on this journey with us from the beginning and hopefully see you all there on our opening day! We will be posting regular updates and more information on how our new project develops.

So be sure to follow us on our social media platforms to keep up with the progress!

Twitter: @Barchamtrees
Facebook: Barcham Trees
Instagram: barchamtreesplc
LinkedIn: Barcham Trees PLC

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Queen’s Green Canopy is launched this week!

The aim of The Queen’s Green Canopy (QGC) is to thank Her Majesty The Queen for her exceptional service, celebrate her Platinum Jubilee and promote the importance of trees to the environment, through the encouragement of tree planting and tree conservation across the nation.

The potential legacy for the Queen’s Green Canopy tree planting within the UK is enormous and it is vital that trees are planted correctly and maintained with mulch and watered for up to 24 months after planting to give trees the best possible start.

If you want to take part in this scheme and plant trees for your local community, feel free to get in contact with us for advice and suggestions.

Right tree, Right place!

 

 

 

 

 

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What is the carbon consequence of not looking after trees?

Now that we have worked out how much carbon can be stored in our trees we can extrapolate further and have calculated that our tree supply every year has the ability to store at least 260,000 tonnes of dry weight carbon over their lifetimes.

Since Barcham Trees was founded about 30 years ago this figure is nearer 6 million tonnes of stored dry weight carbon.

With this in mind it becomes more important to maintain newly planted trees to secure their well-being (spring/summer watering and mulch is critical) and to protect established trees in the landscape. Once a tree is felled, all of its stored carbon will be released back into the atmosphere in fairly short order, unless the timber is preserved for building works or furniture etc.
We should try and develop a culture of protecting trees and the soil structures that support them. Felling trees should be considered as a matter of last resort and reparation should be made by planting others if this last resort comes into play.

It would be great if people view mature trees as 10 tonne carbon storage assets rather than dispose of them without a thought of the consequences. If a perfectly healthy tree is removed for self-interested reasons alone then the landowner will be directly responsible for releasing all that carbon back into our atmosphere which is already way out of balance.

10 tonne Carbon Storage Asset

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written by Mike Glover, Managing Director.

 

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