It can be difficult to find time to undertake worth-
while tasks that you aren't paid for, but lockdown
here in the UK afforded my fellow volunteers and me
that time to continue development of a community
arboretum for our local Brunswick Park—and to get
it registered with ArbNet as a Level 1 Arboretum.
Whilst there are dozens of appropriate arboretum proj-
ects to consider, the long-term goal for this one was
particularly the recognition of a small-town park as an
arboretum as part of the overall park plan. For me, at
least one trigger article caused a momentary "pause
for thought," and the following extract was pivotal:
Kevin Martin, Head of Trees at Kew Gardens, is
undertaking research at Kew Gardens, based on
Eco Habitat Matching. He has already observed
during 2022 that common beech, which are vulner-
able to drought, are experiencing decline. However,
the Oriental beech, from the Caucasus, is thriving,
as is Fagus turnica, the hybrid of these two.
This got me thinking: should local arboreta have a
defined role in furnishing information that helps
direct the tree planting programmes of the region
they exist in? Clearly, in Kew the work is on an
international scale, but what grows well in the
heat island that is London may not provide solid
data to inform tree planting in Birmingham (the
nearest major city to our local arboretum).
Then for me there was a second strand of thought
after reading in this article that "Last year's State of the
World's Trees report found that of the more than 60,000
known tree species, at least 17,500 are threatened with
extinction, with 440 species down to fewer than 50 indi-
viduals left in the wild." We need somewhere to grow
trees that expand the diversity of the local stock if we
are to be resilient in our fight against climate change.
An Arboretum in a Park
Brunswick Park in Wednesbury, West Midlands, is a
Victorian Grade 2 listed Green Flag Park. It is a little
under 14 ha (35 acres), but it abuts the town ceme-
tery, which increases the vistas and contiguous public
space. It is the Town's only formal park, as much
of the green infrastructure in the area is low-grade
open space or playing fields. However, Brunswick
Park does connect widely via disused rail links, river
and other riparian areas, and pocket parks scat-
tered like unpolished jewels on a necklace. This green
corridor serves our local wildlife, something that
visitors to the Park have said they value highly.
Offsetting the Felling of Trees
In late 2018, the Friends of Brunswick Park (FoBP)
was approached by the Sandwell Council's Urban
Forestry section to inform us that they proposed to
remove a number of trees after a couple of unex-
pected failures, one of which had fallen onto play
Brunswick Park and an Emerging
Role for Community Arboreta
38 CityTREES
By Ian "Mac" McDermott
Educator and Trainer in Arboriculture
with Birmingham Tree People
