LeadburnWood

Newsletter May 2026

Leadburn Community Woodland – May 2026

Leadburn’s aspen trees are looking fantastic at the moment. The rustling spring green leaves of this native tree species turn a beautiful yellow in autumn. They are wonderful for wildlife, but are unfortunately far less abundant than formerly.

Scotland The Big Picture have been promoting the planting of more aspen to encourage its recovery in Scotland and have produced a lovely short film with much more detail (see video on their webpage Painting Scotland Yellow | SCOTLAND: The Big Picture).

Leadburn is very pleased to have a healthy population that grow well on the less peaty parts of the woodland.

First planted in several groves just after we bought the woodland nearly 20 years ago, many of them are now over twenty metres high and sprouting lots of suckers.

As aspens are unusual in that they can go 20 years or more without producing new seeds and seedlings, these suckers can grow directly into new trees in their own right, albeit genetically identical to the parent aspen.

Our roe deer seem to ‘enjoy’ aspen suckers as much as we do, nibbling new young leaves and rubbing off the bark of young saplings, often fatally.

We therefore encourage the spread of the suckers away from the parent aspen by protecting some of the suckers with plastic tubes or wire mesh until they are too wide or tall for deer to damage.

Aspens are probably not exactly a garden tree as they can grow tall quite quickly and produce many suckers, but if anyone has access to larger spaces that could give homes to some of our surplus aspen suckers please let us know and we’ll get some potted up.