Who am I?

My name is Ashley Peace. There I am in the picture, hugging a Scots pine in Scotland's Glenmore Forest Park. I live on the edge of the Peak District, near Sheffield, England. I studied ecological science at the University of Edinburgh and graduated with a BSc (Hons) in 2008. After uni, I volunteered with Sheffield Wildlife Trust for three months and now I work as an apprentic arborist. I enjoy photography, walking, camping... and nature in general. I'm at my happiest wandering around the local countryside on hot, sunny days.

Why treeblog?

Back in October 2006 I attended a careers fair hosted Edinburgh Uni. At the Forestry Commission stand I was given a free packet of Scots pine seeds as a promotional gift. I planted them along with some cider gum and grey alder seeds on the 28th of March 2007. They are Set A: treeblog's first ever trees!

That packet of Scots pine seeds had given me an idea for a blog focussed on the development of different trees all the way from seed to maturity. I toyed with the idea for a month before registering the treeblog.co.uk domain and securing web hosting. It wasn't long before a functional blog was up and running. Test posts were posted and elements of the design were tweaked over the winter. I intended to start the blog proper by planting some seeds when I was home from uni during during the Christmas holidays, but in the end treeblog was officially launched on the 14th of February 2007. A few weeks later the first seeds were planted - Set A!

What is the point of treeblog?

Simply put, treeblog is a blog about trees. But more specifically, I aim to focus treeblog on the life and development of a number of individual trees belonging to a number of different species. treeblog will follow these trees right from the seed stage; it will document when (if) the first seedlings emerge; and as (if) these seedlings grow and develop into saplings, it will be there to record and document all of that too. As far as practicable, treeblog will track the lives of these trees.

What about the treeblog trees?

The first set of seeds (Set A) was planted on the 28th of March 2007, and is made up of three species: cider gum (Eucalyptus gunnii), grey alder (Alnus incana), and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). See their progress with Photo-timelines or read all Set A treeblog posts! Set B was planted on the 14th of March 2008, and was made up of four species: downy birch (Betula pubescens), dwarf pine (Pinus mugo), European beech (Fagus sylvatica), sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa), and weeping beech (a variant of European beech). Read all Set B treeblog posts... but be warned that Set B was an abject failure: only one seedling appeared, a downy birch, and it died.

The most recent set has been more of a success. Set C was planted on the 11th of March 2009 and consisted of three species: downy birch (Betula pubescens), rowan (Sorbus aucuparia), and sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa). The sweet chestnuts I gathered from the same tree as I did those planted in Set B; unfortunately I incorrectly stored them over winter (again), so none germinated (again). Third time lucky? The rowans I planted incorrectly, so I exhumed them and replanted them as Set C(r) on the 12th of May 2009. I didn't pretreat the seeds so they probably won't germinate until 2010, if at all. I collected the rowan berries from two different trees, one of which has since blown over and been removed. The downy birches germinated en masse. There are too many for treeblog to keep track of them all, so just twenty-six were picked to be followed. One has since died. Read all Set C - and Set C(r) - posts orfollow their progress with Photo-timelines.


Last updated on the 3rd of October 2009