National Tree Week, organised by The Tree Council is the UK's largest annual tree celebration, marking the start of the winter tree planting season. Between 23 November and 1 December, people will be planting trees around the country.

Trees are high on the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's conservation agenda. Our work, both in biodiversity discovery science and conservation horticulture, is shifting focus to ensure we can provide the knowledge and expertise to find solutions to address the Biodiversity Crisis and the Climate Emergency.

Trees are also high in the public’s agenda and many organisations are embracing tree planting and setting ambitious targets to capture carbon. Tree planting is a long term undertaking that needs to be well planned and strategic. New tree plantings must be ecologically resilient to provide the long term benefits that we plan for them to deliver.

Here at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, we have a unique collection of trees from around the world. All of the trees are recorded on our plant records database and a quick query reveals the current count to be 3512 (1). These make up 57 Families, 148 Genera, 785 Species and 1068 taxa, all crammed into 70 acres at 1 mile from the centre of Edinburgh. This collection is an important scientific and cultural heritage resource but also an important green space in the city.

This week, we will be planting 33 significant new trees across the Garden. We have a unique pallet of trees to go out from 12 different countries. All of the trees are either grown from seed collected directly from the wild or propagated from heritage trees in the collection.

Of note are:

• Acer campbellii
• Sciadopitys verticillata
• Betula divaricata
• Ulmus pumila ‘Pinnato-Ramosa’
• Quercus rotundifolia

For more details, read our blog here

The traditional winter tree planting season runs from November through to March, so if you miss National Tree Week, there is still plenty of time to get trees in the ground.

(1) The number rises to 4996 if we include the collections held at Benmore, Logan and Dawyck. Note that this is an underestimate because only accessed trees are recorded.