Around 130 ancient trees, forming part of a famous 18th century landscape have been treated to one-metre deep aeration treatment as part of ongoing restoration.
Gibside, near Newcastle upon Tyne, formerly owned by the Bowes-Lyons family but now under the protection of the National Trust, includes ‘The Long Walk’, an avenue half a mile long lined with Oak, Sycamore and Lime. “As the gardens were designed between 1722 and 1760 the trees are at least 150 years old,” says Gibside’s Landscape Gardener Keith Blundell. “There are also some Turkey Oaks that I think were planted later, probably in the nineteenth century, as replacements. Some of the trees were suffering from stress with crown die-back and nutritional problems,”
Specialist aeration contractors, Terrain Aeration worked at Gibside for three days injecting compressed air, via a probe, one metre below the surface to create underground fracturing and break up the compacted soil. “They worked between the drip lines of the trees and needed to use the JCB hammer to insert the probe most of the time because the ground was so hard,” Keith said
Tel: 01449 673783 www.terrainaeration.co.uk
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