Hope Springs At The Sycamore Gap

It's like Frankenstein. Kinda. But Better and Good.

Hadrian’s Wall is a 70 odd mile long stone wall that dates back to Roman Times. It marked the border between Roman Brittania and Caledonia. As countrysides, British countrysides especially go, this wall ran up and down rolling hills. One remarkably photogenic dip had a lovely, majestic Sycamore tree in it. And thus the photogenic Sycamore Gap came to be widely associated with images like this:

That was the case until the morning of September 28th of last year, in what has been rightly described as "an act of vandalism" this very photogenic tree died in a horrible doing (chainsawed, arrested) when it was hundreds of years old, and, save for a pocket of salvaged genetic material there wasn’t much hope.

But we’ve got GOOD news, don’t you know. A new tree, born of the old, may soon stand again thanks to the work of well-worn garden trade and dedicated horticulturists.

There are two wonderfully named main stars of this lovely story: Rachel Ryver and Chris Trimmer (Seriously. These are their real names!) two UK horticulturists.

Upon coming onto the scene of the felled tree Miss Ryver sprang into action, quickly collecting what those in this field call scion, young twigs with buds. This is the key raw material. Greenish branches, buds, seedlings, etc.

Five bags of scion were collected and sent on to a lab in Devon. There Mr. Trimmer and his process began.

Bags were emptied. Diseases checked for. Grafting begun.

What is grafting?

Glad you asked! Grafting binds fresh roots with living twigs that have buds of the same species.

The two knit together to make one larger living young tree. This was the only way to preserve the beloved Sycamore Gap tree and it worked! Now five months after the horrible incident and the lab has nine surviving grafted plants and scores of seedlings.

The goal is to keep nurturing these seedlings and then try to grow them from the stump of the old photogenic predecessor. Obviously it’s probably too ambitious to expect the new tree to be perfect (time, nature and weather will weigh in) but it’ll be good and the work that went into it will be long remembered as a good thing.