Treasuring the elm

Ringwood Waldorf School is part of a project trying to save the UK’s much-loved elm tree population.  Pupils have recently planted elm trees, which will be monitored over the next thirty years.

The school is in the first phase of the national scheme planting 250 saplings taken from the few native trees that survived Dutch Elm Disease.

The fungus decimated the country’s elms, taking the distinctive tree - once an icon of Britain’s landscape - to near extinction.

The Great British Elm Experiment is using cuttings from those surviving elms in the hope they possess a genetic predisposition that enabled them to resist the disease.

Schools such as Ringwood Waldorf School will monitor their saplings, taking measurements twice a year.

The project, which is run by the charity Conservation Foundation which has botanist David Bellamy OBE as president, hopes in the long term to reintroduce elms this way across the whole of the country.