ROBERT SOMERVILLE
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THE ELM RESTORER
Words - Jo Somerville Photos - Zoe Salt
In 2042. For decades, the death of the elms had been nothing more than a cautionary tale – Dutch Elm Disease had wiped them out of Britain in the 60s. Conventional wisdom said the ancient tree was lost. But conventional wisdom was wrong. With the loss of the English elm, a wood highly prized for its beauty and durability, a thriving portion of the carpentry industry disappeared. Generations of knowledge about traditional woods and their proper cultivation were lost along with it. But right now, you’re standing with your neighbours in the deep-green shadows of a mature elm tree. Its papery seeds are ripe. A breeze rises and small bunches of seeds flutter to your feet. The school children who have come out for this harvest collect the seeds to fill their school bags. Later, they will return to school and pot the seeds in their tree nursery along with saplings already growing. Nurseries like the one at the school have proliferated throughout the countryside. With the work of the community, elms are returning to the land.
The return of the elm has encouraged a movement to resurrect the lost sustainable carpentry and building practices of the British Isles. Local hardwood, a renewable resource, requires significantly less carbon emissions to harvest (due to its proximity), is naturally more fire resistant than cheap softwoods, and is extraordinarily long-lived. A piece of elm furniture remains usable for up to 100 years, far more than the 20 years expected of plywood. There are few more sustainable products on earth. Decades after English elms were declared all but extinct, visionary naturalists like Robert Somerville noticed something strange – some of the mature trees in the countryside were actually elms. They’d been hiding in plain sight.
Soon, elms were discovered in every county in the country. Elms had gone unnoticed for so long for a simple reason; no one expected to see them. During the resurgence of interest in elms, a woman in your village had found this tree in the corner of the neighbourhood park. Scientists from the Forestry Commission studied the tree and declared it genetically resistant to Dutch Elm Disease. Soon, this beautiful tree became a source for breeding and propagation. In the wake of these successes, the government offered more grants for tree planting. Trees of all native varieties were planted across the countryside, including around your village. These trees are a matter of local pride. As they age and die, local carpenters have begun rediscovering lost knowledge of the strengths and benefits of these local hardwoods. Some villages have new barns and buildings designed to highlight the wood’s natural qualities. You know that in only a few decades, your corner of the country will be bright with stretching elms, just as it had been for centuries before. The comeback of these stately trees has become a staple of environmental news and become a symbol of hope – a clear reminder that sometimes what we have thought is lost is actually just waiting. We only need to create the right environment to bring it back.
“Elms do exist, it’s not over. It is a tree that has suffered, but it’s not the end of the story.”
Robert grew up witnessing ecological devastation. Starting in the late 1960s, a bark beetle carrying Dutch Elm Disease infected 20 million English elms. Once as familiar as ash or oak, within little more than a decade the elm tree disappeared. “When it hit, like other people, I thought that was the end for the elms,” Robert remembers.
Then, decades after the initial devastation, Robert noted something odd – a line of strangely familiar-looking trees growing along a roadside. A quick examination revealed they were indeed elm trees. Robert was astonished to see them so healthy and mature. This set Robert on a quest to find as many elms as he could. He soon found many more.
“I felt completely bowled over that there are all these trees that nobody knows about,” Robert explained.
If he had driven by the stand of trees too quickly, he would have missed them. In fact, Robert said, “probably hundreds of thousands of people drive right underneath elms every day, thinking they are dead and gone”.
Through the work of Robert and others, elm trees have been discovered throughout the country. There are far fewer than there once were, but those which remain are strong and largely resistant to the disease. “They say seeing is believing but, in some ways, believing is seeing”.
The Winter after he found the elms, Robert returned to take cuttings from their root suckers for a new tree nursery he had built at home. The cuttings grew into healthy saplings and proved to be resistant to the disease. Since those first saplings, Robert has grown about 150 elms; planting half in his small holding and giving the rest to people with a bit of space to plant them. Recently the local wildlife trust has got in touch, wanting to involve local primary schools in elm tree planting. Robert believes this movement will only grow over time as more people see new elms planted in their neighbourhoods, recognizing that the losses of the 60s can be reversed.
The return of elms will enormously benefit entire ecosystems. The rare white-letter hairstreak butterfly relies on elms to survive. With the elm’s return, the butterfly will once again be able to proliferate. Elms also host lichens, insects, fungi, moths and honeybees colonies in their hollow branches. For many struggling species, the return of the elm will mean a new opportunity to thrive. “We owe it to the planet as a species to right the wrongs of destruction, arrest the extinctions and start to make things thrive again,” Robert said.
Elm trees also have a long and storied history of carpentry use. Robert hopes that through recognizing its extraordinary qualities, elms will once again be cultivated en masse both for their beauty and for their use as a renewable, local building material. To this end, Robert wrote a book called “Barn Club” about these extraordinary local woods, traditional carpentry, and creating ecologically minded communities.
The trees we see across Britain and much of the world are largely the result of concerted tree-planting efforts of the past decades. Our forefathers planted trees they’d never see mature, because they knew their grandchildren would live in their shade. Robert believes this botanical altruism is a key to a better environmental future. But it takes work to cultivate this mentality. Through planting elms, participants learn a dual lesson – that we aren’t only victims of the past, and that we can work now to create the flourishing future our children deserve.
As Robert puts it, “You plant trees for people you will never meet or know. It is a fantastic gift to the chain of humanity”. Elms are no longer a reminder of ecological devastation. Rather, they are becoming, once more, a symbol of hope, community and celebration.
Get involved in Elm Tree Preservation here:
To be inspired by Robert’s passion for Elms read ‘Barn Club: A Tale of Forgotten Elm Trees, Taditional Craft and community Sprit’ here.
For a scientific study, read ‘Where we are with Elm’ by the Future Trees Trust here.
If you are a member of a woodland trust or a wildlife trust, ask if native elms can be involved in tree planting projects.
Then get looking for your local Elms. “It’s really important that people find them for themselves, open their eyes and ears and become personally involved”, says Robert. Brian Everhsem’s key for identification is here, look out for their asymmetrical leaves! If the trees are on private land, ask permission from the landowner, and take cuttings or try germinating the seeds to create your own tree nurseries where you have space.
