To make up for that patience, though, we are going a bit crazy planting support species. Mostly that means wattles and a few black locusts, Persian silk trees, and pepper trees. But it also includes oaks.
Oak trees aren’t the first “support” tree you might think of for Perth, but they’re actually tough as nails once they get established. They also make very good shelterbelt trees, being fire retardant and wind resistant. I collected some acorns from a local park the autumn before this one, and grew them up. We’ve got three baby English Oaks planted out already, and another four on the balcony, waiting for planting. I’m also planning another acorn gathering expedition, to grow some more seedlings.
That’s not all, though. My latest present to myself was two cork oak saplings from Diggers, which arrived in the post last week. We planted them out on Sunday. Eventually the plan is to have a small cork oak woodland in the far corner of the block, which will be beautiful, low maintenance, mostly fireproof, and potentially produce a valuable crop of cork in about ten or fifteen years.
(image via Wikimedia Commons)
