Thursday 9 May 2013

Hilly Fields honoured with Jubilee tree

As part of the on-going celebrations to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, we will be planting the Jubilee Tree donated by the Tree Council at Hilly Fields on Wednesday 22 May.  

Meet at the cafĂ© from 12.45. Students from Prendergast school will come out at 1.15 pm for the ceremony.  Several people from the Brockley 50+ Club which meets at Brockley Social Club will share some memories of the Coronation with us and then some of them and the students will plant the tree.

This is a prestigious occasion for Brockley as there will only be 60 trees throughout the country to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. A digital record of all 60 plantings will be presented to Her Majesty in June. The tree itself will have a smart plaque which will be readable from smart phones. Please do join us -- Brockley Society tree officers, Friends of Hilly Fields, and Prendergast School students -- for this special occasion. 

If you or anyone you know has memories of the Coronation, do encourage them to attend.

The tree we have selected is a disease resistant English Elm (ulmus procera), a species which was decimated in the 60's and 70's on the arrival of Dutch Elm Disease in the UK. There are two fine surviving specimens in Preston Park, Brighton, believed to be the two oldest surviving specimens in the country:

By Ulmus man (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

PS. Interestingly, there is also a surviving elm in Ladywell Fields, which hardly ever gets any press, so I'll go on a photo hunt soon and post you a picture here ...

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