Barcham Trees in the white bag - Forestry Journal

Barcham Trees in the white bagBarcham Trees began in 1978 when Pete Wells took over as owner. Pete is now retired from any day-to-day management inthe business but his influence, revolving around the design, development and use of ‘white bags’, remains prevalent and pervasivethroughout Barcham, says sales director Keith Sacre. He spares no praise for Pete’s continuing influence. “Pete Wells runs throughthe whole of this business in both character and presence and is central to success of the whole Barcham ‘thing’”, says Keith.Pete told us that in the 1960s and1970s he continually met tree officersexperiencing huge problems with the failureof bare-root trees. Pete calls these treesthe ‘80-20 trees’, because 80% of the rootsystem remains in the ground when liftedfrom the nursery, and figures two thirds of LAbudgets were being spent on replacements.“The reason was threefold,” says Pete,“lack of a root system; composition of thesubstrate including sub soil and brick rubble;and lack of post-planting maintenance.“The answer is rooted in the use ofcontainerised trees,” says Pete, “with 100%of the root system in the planting holesurrounded by substrate that provides foran amenable soil root zone, with earlymaintenance to give ‘breathing space’ forspeedy and sustained establishment.”Three key factors are required, says Pete:• Right tree in the right place (site) usingwhole, healthy and vigorous trees withproper uncompromised root systemscontained in their own soil;• A planting operation which takes intoaccount recipient planting site andsoil, which should be well-aerated,not water-logged nor compacted andmost certainly disease-free;• Monitoring and aftercare, mostimportant being water – the factormost likely to cause death especiallyof container-grown trees.These factors pointed Pete towards thedevelopment and use of the legendary ‘whitebag’ and the birth of the Barcham era.A recipe for successBarcham shifts 60,000 to 70,000 trees peryear to all market sectors and chalked upa turnover of around £5.1m last year. Theworkforce of 50 men and women growsconsiderably with seasonal workers to copewith peak periods of tree potting and sales.So what are the factors underpinningBarcham’s high profile position in UKarboriculture? Firstly, they have a highlyintegrated operation using moderntechnology in tandem with well-establishedarboricultural methods. Secondly, Barchamemployees, typically long serving, arebrought up from ‘ground level’ andencouraged to continually develop theirskills. The net result is a staff with solidarboricultural experience, skills andperspective underpinned by sound academicqualifications.To shift 70,000 trees a year you need a goodsales force and nowhere in Barcham doesthis dual policy of hands-on experience andcontinuing education show up more clearlythan in its sales force, from ‘top to bottom’.Sales and marketing manager/director,30Keith Sacre, is doing an MSc degreein arboriculture and urban forestry atMyerscough College. Ellen Carvey,sales executive (retail), has completed aFoundation Degree in arboriculture on-line,also at Myerscough, and is now doing anMBA (Masters of Business Administration)at the Open University (OU). Tom Wilsonand Lee Oakley are both following theFoundation Degree in arboriculture on-lineat Myerscough, while Wesley Dyer is studyingfor a degree in Business Management atthe OU. Julie Tenney and David Johnsonare partway through their AA Technician’sCertificate.Keith Sacre, visibly proud of the high level ofeducation and training attained by his salesstaff, told us, “This high level of educationtraining is unusual in a sales staff.” No-onewould disagree with that.No compromise on qualityBarcham has established a ‘shelf-life’ policyfor all products. Each potted tree is given ashelf-life indicated by tagging, which alsoappears on the stock screen. As ‘sell-by date’approaches every effort is made to shift thetree but if unsold the tree is culled within arelatively short space of time.This policy is an important aspect ofBarcham’s overriding aim to establish qualityas its number one priority. “Everything hingeson quality,” says Keith.Barcham is aware that trees are still boughtaccording to morphology (shape) but sees aneed to bring tree physiology into the frame.To this end Barcham has tested 15,000 ofits trees for leaf fluorescence, cell electrolyteleakage and chlorophyll content. Thisprovided benchmark figures for 2010 and‘kicked-off’ three consecutive years of testingand baseline figures. With this achievedBarcham will publish what they deemnecessary as a benchmark in tree physiology.The work is being carried out by Dr GlynnPercival at Bartlett Tree Experts.Keith is a larger than life figure in UKarboriculture and his inclusive managementstyle became immediately apparent whenintroducing me to staff and colleagues,saying, “They will give you the best ‘handson’story on Barcham Trees.”Nursery springboard intosalesSales executive Julie Tenney has nationwideresponsibility for sales to local authoritiesand related contractors. With 21 years ofservice, Julie started out in the nursery whereshe gained her knowledge of trees andlearnt arboriculture skills. Currently studyingfor her AA Technician’s Certificate, Julie saysmoving from the bottom up was the best wayto enter the sales team.Julie has potted, budded, pruned andSales executive Julie Tenney on the nursery whereshe started her career with Barcham Trees.weeded, indeed carried out all thefundamentals of arboriculture. “This puts mein a much better position to satisfy clients’needs. If they ask for a particular tree whichis not available at that time I can suggestan equally good alternative species. Mynursery experience enables me to ask withconfidence where (kind of site) the tree(s)are going into,” said Julie, “and then give asound assessment of whether that particularspecies is capable of coping with the soil andaccompanying environmental conditions.When you have worked ‘hands-on’ with treesyou know exactly what a particular speciescan do, can’t do and won’t do,” says Julie.She says the AA Technician’s Certificate willmake her better placed to obtain deeperinsights into customers’ requests, ambitionsand aspirations for the trees they purchaseand plant. Julie has an interest in BS 5837and ‘trees and the law’. “It gives me a betterunderstanding of my customers and theirrequirements,” she says. “The qualificationwill help me relate in a much better way withmy client base. I love my tree officer clientsand would not work with any other clientbase,” said Julie.Natasha Hutchison is responsible for ‘handson’organisation of Barcham’s technicalseminars but this is only a small part of herresponsibilities. She is sales executive to‘the trade’ and also has an administrativefunction in the allocation of orders. Withten years’ service, Natasha also startedout in the nursery and moved graduallyinto sales. “This certainly helped me,” saysNatasha. “Customers ask me about how toprune different species. With my experienceI can give them a correct answer andreassure them on exactly the size, shapeand dimensions of the canopy they will get.

Clyde Seagrave on the nursery. Whitepots, 65-litre size.Close-up on a white pot showingbiodegradable top with pull-tie, stitchedhandles and drip irrigation.Accessing trees via a pruning platform. Lifting trees for dispatch.Why we use white pots and slow releasefertiliser formulations are other frequentlyasked questions. Answers given providecrucial reassurance for customers that theyare getting a well-looked-after product,” shesays.Dispatch inside and outWesley Dyer (dispatch manager) and DavidSteedman (assistant dispatch manager)are sales team members ensuring the righttrees get to the right customers in the rightcondition and as speedily as possible. Davidhas been with Barcham Trees since 2002,always on dispatch but previously outsidelifting orders and loading vehicles, andtherefore another example of ‘bottom up’experience and skills.“I came inside in autumn/winter of 2008,”says David, “to be part of a two-man teamresponsible for organisation and logistics.This entails picking up orders on screen fromsales; linking orders going to customers inthe same area of the country and therebybuilding up and consolidating loads;ensuring that lorries have feasible loads interms of volume on board, area within whichthe load is delivered and the cost involved,”he told us. “During the winter peak periodfive lifting teams comprising two men plusTom Howard, the overall team leader, arehard at work. Tom knows from experiencewhat trees, type, size and quantity can fit ona specific load. Both Wesley and I have thesame kind of background and experienceso we also know exact accommodationrequirements and limitations.” “Forinstance,” says David,” the larger stuff won’tfit on rigid vehicles and we know exactlywhen to break down loads that will notfit into a single load. Understanding andknowing is down to first-hand experience,”he says.Directing operationsWendy Mears has three years’ service asPA to Warren Holmes Chatfield, Barcham’soperations director whose key role is buyingin trees each season. “Warren,” saysWendy, “oversees the whole production areaat Barcham and also does human resourcesacross the entire company. This includeshiring staff which increase quite dramaticallyin September when temporary staff arrive onsix-month contracts. We have 50 full-timestaff but this goes up to 80 from Septemberwhen we start taking delivery of trees,including our own which are brought upfrom a separate field site. This is essentiallya replenishment period when we plant newstock,” she says.Sales kick-off in September and remainbuoyant through to April, covering the idealtree planting period. “Retail sales continue togain in importance,” says Wendy, “especiallysince the retail side of our business went livein the last 12 months with on-line sales.“Barcham is keen to do business with allmarket areas and sectors,” says Wendy,“and increasingly encourages people tobuy on line but with the facility to viewthe company’s range of products byappointment.” Wendy designed Barcham’ssystems for delivery of trees in containersand into the field.Strict quality controlMaureen (Mo) Palmer, quality controlmanager with over 12 years’ service,is responsible for incoming stock andsupervising the grading team which checkstrees for quality and health as they comein. Mo also accompanies Warren HolmesChatfield to select trees for purchase overthe summer period. Supervision of thepruning team, prioritising pruning workrequired throughout the year and yearroundchecking of stock for insect andmite pests, diseases, wind damage andnutrient deficiency symptoms are additionalresponsibilities assigned to Mo.“International arrivals demand particularlystringent health checks,” says Mo. Forinstance, trees arriving from the United Statesrequire a DEFRA plant quarantine officer inattendance and he/she will check both soiland tree. “Many people do not appreciatethat a containerised tree is actually a ‘miniecosystem’and needs to be considered andtreated accordingly,” Mo told us.The potting machineClyde Seagrave, with 13 years’ service anda profound understanding of operationalactivities right across the nursery site, clearlyknows Barcham inside out.Clyde gave us a tour of the nursery site andbegan by explaining how the trees arrive onsite from outside or Barcham’s own separatefield nursery. “Incoming trees are preparedin the shed by Mo Palmer’s gangs,” saidClyde. “They are inspected for shape andhealth. Anything we are not happy with isrejected. It is better to start out right than todiscover you have a bent or deterioratingtree six months down the line.”Prepared trees are placed in ‘stillages’,custom-designed mobile steel pallets thatprovide support for the trees as they aremoved for loading up on the bespokepotting machine. “When I first came toBarcham everything was potted outside inall weathers,” said Clyde, “but more speedand greater efficiency was needed whichcould only come from mechanisation. Theproposed machine was put out to tenderand the result is our unique machine. Butthis is more than a machine,” says Clyde,“with stillages and conveyors it is a system. Itwill prune roots to whatever size white pot isrequired, mainly 45-litre and 65-litre pots,”he said. The system looked complicated butin essence is logical and sequential. Theempty pot starts off in one corner and comesalong the conveyor where it meets up withthe tree held by a clamp. Tree and pot arelined up and the tree let down to plantinglevel in the pot. The pot is filled up withcompost and settled in the bag by a vibratingplate. The tree, now secure, is released bythe clamp and a label attached. Tractors andtrailers remove the containerised trees.This is a highly integrated operation workedby 10 casuals in winter starting at the endof November and finishing by the end ofMarch. It pots between 40,000 and 45,000trees a year during this period. Some 20,000to 25,000 trees are still potted outside,mainly the bigger trees which are too big forthe system to handle.‘In the bag’Visitors are confronted with avenue afteravenue of potted trees representing almostevery temperate species imaginable, plusa good few that have seen warmer places.There are 430 species and varieties on thissite representing broadleaves, conifers, bothnative and exotic, and even palms.Barcham went for white bags at a time whenmost other nurseries were still using rigidblack plastic pots. “The key points makingwhite bags’ volumes better than black rigidpots are related to heat, light and watering,”said Clyde. He explained how tree rootsgrowing in black pots grow to the edge onlyto be forced left or right to subsequentlyproduce a circular root ball. “This is why wefavour white bags,” says Clyde.The white bag lets a certain amount of lightthrough and tree roots, being negativelyphototropic, retreat from the edge and turnback into the compost with minimal spirallingand no root ball. Trees are immediatelyready for customer planting without any root31

Features: Barcham Trees in the White Bagpruning necessary.All white bags used by Barcham have abiodegradable top with a pull tie, whichcovers the soil compost surface to minimiseevaporation and exclude weeds, and a pairof stitched handles. Landscapers value thisfeature as it means two guys can walk a longway carrying a heavy potted tree.Fertigation – integratedirrigation and fertilisationEach tree in every line is linked up to anautomated watering system based on atrickle (drip) design and micro-irrigation.Each potted tree has a four-spike dripmanifold and when the water comes onautomatically it simply drips into the pot. Wewere there during the late spring droughtwhen the water was coming on three timesa day, each cycle delivering 0.75 litres togive a total per tree application of 2.25 litresper day. “If this very dry weather persists wemight have to increase the number of cyclesto four to give each tree three litres per day,”said Clyde.There are six pumping stations across the200-acre nursery site. Each pumping stationfeatures an electronic control system. Theoperator simply taps in numbers on a controlpanel to determine the irrigation timingcycle. No turning on of taps at Barcham.Outside each station is a 24,000-gallonwater storage tank and inside a 100-litreThere are a number of arboriculturalists who are officially retired butstill active in the field and to whom UK industry owes a great deal.Pete Wells, founder of Barcham Trees, is one of these. Pete started outas a tree contractor felling diseased elms across ‘Constable Country’(East Anglia). “English elms were sometimes the only natural treesgrowing in neat Fenland fieldsand, not wanting dying trees inthe corners of their fields, farmerswere eager to have them felled,”says Pete. They soon realised theyneeded something to replacethem and this is where Pete camein, felling the diseased elms andplanting native trees as required.“I was already raising Englishoak, common ash and field maplefrom seed, mainly for motorwayplanting,” says Pete. He eventuallybegan to win county councilcontracts, and was soon plantingnative trees, including hazel andguelder rose, across virtually everyparish council in Norfolk, Suffolkand Cambridgeshire.“What really prompted meto concentrate on inner cityrather than rural landscapes wasthe purchase of trees by localauthorities from a business perspective. They are not strapped forcash, place big orders and are prompt payers,” he said. “As Barchamdeveloped, I became aware that the urban forest was vital to thehuman race. People now live in towns and cities and that’s wherethe tree men must grow their trees. It’s become a mission, ‘trees andpeople’.”Local authorities were purchasing and planting a lot of trees butviability was not good. Pete believes a lot of material was coming infrom the continent. The arrival and planting of foreign provenancesin British native trees was a brisk trade going on for a lot longer than32tank for mixing a N:P:K 27-7-22 pluscomplete trace elements water-solublefertiliser formulation into the irrigationwater. “This is a general feed,” says Clyde,“providing all things to all trees given thehuge variety of trees on site.”The Dosatron pumping mechanism poursmixed liquid fertiliser feed into the 100-litrewater tank to provide the exact concentrationfor application to potted trees. Thoughreferred to as an irrigation system this is infact a highly sophisticated form of fertigation.Barcham has built two reservoirs with naturalclay lining each holding nine million gallonsof water. Alongside is a mini water treatmentplant with water passing through sand filters.Chlorine is added for disinfection to keep thepipework clean of bacteria, algae and watermould growth. The whole water storage andtreatment complex is located alongside oneof the natural drain dykes that criss-cross theFens.Barcham has got a ‘Winter ExtractionLicence’ through the Environment Agencyto fill up the reservoirs during winter. Waterfrom the reservoir goes into the treatmentsand filter and receives chlorine before goinginto a 36,000-gallon holding tank to supplythe six pumping stations around the nurserysite. We met Trevor Layton, Barcham’s‘Irrigation Man’ employed full-time onirrigation operations from March to Octoberand on maintenance work during winter.In addition to being a sound and sustainablefeat in horticultural engineering the reservoircomplex is an important habitat for wildlifeespecially waterfowl. Also lapwings, groundnestingbirds increasingly rare in other partsof the country, apparently nest with abandonin the fields around the reservoirs.Dr Terry MabbettPete Wells – the founder of Barcham treesPete Wells (left) pictured here with Liz Wood, Tree Officer (Operations) atThurrock Borough Council, inside Coalhouse Fort at Tilbury with a 135- to 140-year old black poplar pollard. Pete is instrumental in preserving this provenanceby taking cuttings to propagate new trees (essentialARB, 32, 34 and 36).Maureen Palmer is in charge of quality control.Seen here with Liquid Amber.The electronically controlled irrigation system isoperated by tapping numbers into a control panel.most people realise. Pete says a breakdown of trading carried out byCranfield University showed how the UK had been a net importer oftrees, mostly from the Netherlands and Italy, for a very long time.It was from these problems responsible for poor tree survival thatPete came up with his original concept of the ‘entire tree’, a containergrownspecimen with a completeand unprejudiced root system.He selected the ‘white bag’ asperforming the dual function ofpackaging for tree transportationas well as a vessel in which thetree can grow. “This ready-made‘pack and wrap’ system preventsa lot of the physical damage thatcan otherwise occur in the treepurchaser’s yard,” says Pete,”especially since the days are gonewhen local authorities employedtheir own specialist workers tohandle trees. They now hire casuallabourers and with trees safelyand securely inside a growingvessel (the white bag) you don’teven have to cover up and protecttrees during transit as you did withbare-root material,” he says. Petebemoans this well-establishedtrend towards contractors at theexpense of in-house craft skills within local authorities. “They claim theswitch is all about saving money but much bigger costs are incurredfurther down the line,” he says.These final comments cast me back to summer vacations in the1960s, working for my local authority as an assistant groundsman andpark-keeper alongside George Haynes, a First World War Veteranfrom the Battle of The Somme and already past official retirement age.I recall pricking out wallflower seedlings in August 1968 alongsideGeorge in a greenhouse complex behind the council offices fromwhere he would provide every single bedding plant for the town.