Walnut Juglans regia
This is our Walnut I say ours but we are just its current owners and protectors. Its a symbiotic relationship really, we look after it and it repays us with nuts ( if the squirrels don't get them first), Wood for carving when we prune it and leaves for leaf mould for the rest of the garden.
The tree towers over the house and must be about 80ft high and we know it is about 120 years old. In this photo of the house from about 1903 you can see a shrub growing at the side of the house, the young tree.
In fact if the Walnut wasn't growing where it is we wouldn't be living here. The previous owners of the house wanted to fell it so they could extend the house, luckily there is a Tree preservation order (TPO) on the tree so it was saved and they moved.
One thing has always puzzled me which is as you can see from the old photo this house was called Rose Cottage, at some point in the last 100 years it was changed not to Walnut cottage but to The Willows. We do have a small pollarded Weeping Willow at the end of the garden but the Walnut is the dominant tree.
We try and encourage wildlife into the tree, there is a bat box on the trunk and birds nest in the canopy every year. I think however my highlight was when this fledgling Tawny owl chick used it a couple of years ago.
This is part of Lucy Corrander's monthly Tree Following meme. See more at Loose and Leafy.
That's cool that you have a photo of your tree in its youth!
ReplyDeleteOne of the little girls in the photo is the mother of a man who lives along the road, he gave me the picture.
ReplyDeleteIt's really neat that you can determine the age of your tree from a photograph. Cute owl. Thanks for sharing your tree, it's beautiful.
ReplyDeleteAnna, we are really lucky in the village to have a very good local historian who has an archive of old photo's. Although I got this one from the grandson of the little girl we have a few others of the house over the last 100yrs.
Delete