S2 Episode 8 Judith’s Silver Birch trees

Judith’s life journey with her Silver Birch tree

When Judith Kleinman was told that there were 3 Silver Birch trees looking for a new home, she didn’t hesitate to offer them a space in her courtyard garden. As illustrated by her lovely drawing, Silver Birch trees have accompanied Judith throughout her life. Her connection with them goes back to childhood when there was one outside her bedroom window. However the real significance of these trees comes from a more challenging time in her life when aged just 19 and a student at the Guildhall School of Music, she was involved in a car accident whilst on holiday and found herself spending an extended period of time in the Royal National Orthopeadic hospital in Stanmore. Once again she encountered Silver Birch trees.

For this plant story though we began outside Judith’s backdoor where the photographs above were taken. As Judith says about the trees you get a “ real sense of vertical resting - “the energy that gravity has to go up but be rooted in safety in the ground.”

We then went together to revisit the hospital in Stanmore. The hospital had had nature around it that Judith remembered glimpsing from her hospital bed and occasionally seeing more clearly when she had been taken from her bed for physiotherapy and moved between buildings.

Remembering the Silver Birch trees that she saw during her hospital stay she says: “I think what they've represented for me is the many different kinds of strengths there are in us and that we need to call on different strengths at different times. And that sort of flexibility and direction that they've got was such an inspiration from that time really.”

Now at the hospital there is the most beautiful and accessible garden that patients can enjoy whatever the time of year and indeed whatever the weather because of covered seating pods. It has been built by the charity Horatio’s Garden and we went to meet the Head Gardener of this garden in Stanmore - Ashley Edwards - seen below with Judith.

Horatio Chapple was an aspiring doctor. He volunteered at Salisbury spinal centre in his school holidays and through his own observation and conversations with patients, he realised that there was a need for a garden. Tragically aged just 17 he was killed on a science expedition but his ideas have been realised by the charity Horatio’s Garden with a mission to create gardens in all 11 NHS spinal injury centres in the UK.

You can hear the conversation between Judith and Ashley in this podcast episode as they discuss the importance of nature to patients in the hospital and yes the Silver Birch trees are a big part of this garden. I love the way that if you are in a wheelchair you can get right up to the stem of tree and touch it. Ashley says that decision came from feedback from patients in other gardens. I wondered why they had chosen Silver Birch trees?

Ashley: I think they have good wildlife value, so they support many different insects and they're a native tree, so that's one of the big reasons. Also they look great all year round. In the spring you have the lovely fresh green foliage that appears. Then you get catkins and then in the winter you have you know the bright white bark and sometimes we do wipe them down a bit just to really show it off. And they glow, yeah they really glow in the winter. They're lovely multi-stemmed trees, so you get the effect of more than one tree in one tree. So that's a really clever planting effect as well. And yeah, the birds adore them. We've got birds flitting in and out of the trees. They're very tactile, they have the kind of bark that you want to go up and touch.”

As part of her recovery Judith had lessons in and later became a teacher of Alexander Technique and she practised yoga and tai chi. All of her experience and skills have come together in a book she has written called Finding Quiet Strength. She says in introduction that: “the ideas in the book can help on the journey of finding a quiet, flexible strength, which gives us a greater capacity to choose how we want to be in the world.” I think when you listen to this programme you will see a relationship between this ambition and her beloved Silver Birch trees.

How to Grow a Silver Birch tree

Can I grow it in a pot?

You could grow a silver birch in a pot. It's obviously going to be smaller than it would be if you were planting it in the ground. And you would need to supply it with everything it needs so you just have to be hot on watering and making sure it gets a yearly soil top up so that it's getting the nutrients it needs. So it will grow in a pot and if you have a very large pot they can do really well and you know you can still have multi-stem specimens in pots if they're big enough so yeah the bigger the better I would say pot wise.

How much space do I need for a silver birch tree?

Well the good thing about Silver Birch is you don't have to have a huge space. You can, if you get a multi-stemmed variety you can actually fit it into a smaller space and because it is multi-stemmed it will stay quite compact and it gives the effect that you have more than one tree which is nice. So yeah it is suitable for a medium-sized garden I would say and with a multi-stemmed tree as well, you don't really need to prune them. They have this lovely shape. So we've got the Betula Jacquemontii here and they have these really nice of diamond shape as they grow. You have a kind of wider in the middle, pointy crown, and you can crown lift them. So what we do here is I slowly prune the lower branches so that you have more stem revealed and it helps as well if you've got underplanting, it gives more light to the stuff you've got underneath.

And in terms of light aspect?

They grow in most aspects. They're not fussy and if you go to your local park or woodlands you'll see Silver Birch growing in all sorts of conditions. So they might grow right next to a conifer or they might grow in an open space. But they generally grow amongst other woodland trees and they like to have that kind of protection from open elements. You don't normally find Silver Birch out in a field on its own, you get them growing amongst other trees. They're often called a pioneer tree because one of the first trees to germinate in open spaces would be a Silver Birch and they often grow quite quickly and fill that space but compared to some trees like an Oak they don't actually live a long life - like 150 years would be really old Silver Birch.

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