What trees taught me about perfect planting — Alan Titchmarsh

It is November 1964. Mr Mackenzie, in his black waistcoat, baggy black trousers, white shirt with tie, his head topped with the battered brown trilby he always wore come rain or shine, wiped the dewdrop off the end of his nose with the back of his horny hand and proceeded to dig up the maiden apple from the short row of fruit trees in his nursery.

He pushed his spade — the silvery blade of which was worn to razor sharpness — into the damp, dark earth and prised out the roots, handing the four-branched sapling to me, the teenager who thought that a single apple tree of the variety ‘Ellison’s Orange’ was a good way to start an orchard.

Not that we had space for one. It would be the sole representative of its race in our small Yorkshire back garden, but I cherished it — when I remembered — over the years and it provided, if not a self-sufficiency of apples, then a modest contribution to the fruit bowl as reward for the years of desultory care that passed for cultivation.

Up until the 1960s, when a garden was to be established, bare-root trees were the norm: dug up in autumn from serried rows in nurseries and fields and shipped with precious little of their native earth clinging to their few sparse hessian-wrapped roots. The thick ones would be cut back and the thinner ones reduced in length when the trees were transplanted and given encouragement in the form of generous helpings of well-rotted muck or garden compost.

Then came the advent of container-grown stock that could be bought and planted at any time of year, regardless of the season because the undisturbed rootball would ensure shock-free establishment in a new location. Funny how no one had thought of it before. Oh, doubtless the Romans and the Greeks did, but it never caught on here until it came across the pond from the USA.

Until the mid 1960s, all deciduous trees, shrubs and roses were dug up and transplanted ‘bare-root’ when dormant between the months of November and March — the earlier the better to allow their new roots to establish in the damp earth before the spring growth spurt. As a result, I always think of November as the start of the gardening year, rather than the last knockings of the old one.

We can still buy bare-root trees and roses today and the one advantage they have over container-grown stock is their value for money. Plants raised in pots (those first ones in the US were grown in large tin cans that had once held plum tomatoes before the ubiquitous plastic pot rendered this early example of re-purposing redundant) require more care and attention in terms of watering and feeding than do plants grown in open ground. This economy of labour and materials is passed on to the consumer.

Not that bare-root planting is without its pitfalls. Too often gardeners are impatient: they want a tree that looks mature as soon as possible and, consequently, they will buy as large a specimen as they can afford. However, it stands to reason that the larger the tree, the more sustenance it needs to draw up from its roots. If the root system has been reduced in size — as it must be when a tree is transplanted from open ground — then a large tree with many branches to support will struggle to establish itself and may take many years to get over the shock. Even container-grown semi-mature trees are no pushover when it comes to establishment in the vicissitudes of a British spring with its intriguingly christened winds and frequent droughts.

One November 20 years ago, I planted a British native broadleaved wood. The majority of the trees were under 12in tall. We planted them in tree shelters to give them a head start and protection from deer and rabbits. We also planted four 6ft-high oaks. Ten years on, the oak saplings we had planted in the tubular shelters overtook the six-footers. A lesson learned. Like old-age pensioners, older trees take longer to settle in after moving house.

As a general rule, I prefer to plant trees no taller than I am (5ft 8in, as you ask). Anything up to that height stands a chance of establishing itself much more rapidly than a towering giant. With a modicum of organic enrichment at the roots, a stake to offer stability when the winds blow and an eye kept to ensure that the earth does not dry out, bare-root trees are still a valuable and economic addition to any garden. Mr Mackenzie would have known that.

Chatsworth: The gardens and the people who made them by Alan Titchmarsh (Ebury Spotlight, £35) is out now