Brighton is battling to save some of UK's finest elm trees

In 1998, Brighton and Hove was designated as the home of the National Elm Collection, writes Karen Pasquali Jones for The Argus' sister title Sussex Life magazine.

This was a great accolade and a tribute to those who battled so valiantly over the years to safeguard the city’s unique collection of elms, of which there may be 70 to 150 or so different varieties and cultivars.

Elm numbers there are increasing, rather than decreasing, and new and often very rare varieties of elm are being discovered. English, Guernsey, Huntingdon, Camperdown and wych elms are also found there in abundance – elm species that are particularly vulnerable to Dutch elm disease, and some less so.

There may be more than 17,000 elms in the Brighton and Hove area, rather more than there were at the onset of Dutch elm disease. Arguably, more damage was caused to some of the veterans by the savage hurricane that swept over southern England on the night of 15 October 1987, felling more than 2,000 trees and damaging many more. Visiting shortly afterwards, I was deeply saddened to see the wreckage of so many fallen giants, especially around the Brighton Pavilion, Queen’s Park and on the Level.

That significant numbers of trees survived Dutch elm disease in Brighton, Eastbourne, Seaford and parts of East Sussex was very much down to the forward thinking and swift action by elm specialists such as foresters, scientists, arboriculturists and the local authorities.

Immediate sanitation felling, and pruning out of the disease, saved mature English elm from near extinction. In the early days of the second big epidemic, East Sussex lost fewer trees compared with other counties such as Somerset and Gloucestershire.

There were a variety of reasons for this. First, the English elm was not a significant feature in much of the rural landscape of the county. Notable elm populations hugged the coastal areas, where there was a natural defence against the march of the elm bark beetle provided by the South Downs, the Ashdown Forest, and the English Channel. This gave arboriculturists more time to prepare and mount their defences.

Second, while the disease was to rapidly overwhelm other areas, bringing an end to sanitation felling and fungicide injection programmes, in Brighton and East Sussex the sanitation felling programmes were stepped up.

In 1973, Brighton and Hove, and much of East Sussex, became a Dutch elm disease control area. The control zone stretches from Falmer in the west of the county to Pevensey in the east, except Eastbourne, where elms are managed by Eastbourne Borough Council.

In the control areas, it became illegal to move unbarked elm timber, and a public campaign was launched to inform residents of the threat posed by the disease and what to look out for. Leaflets, modelled on Batman and Robin, were prepared for schoolchildren, and people were encouraged to call in and report instances of the disease. But none of this would have had much effect if the councils had not decided to move hard and fast, and most importantly, to remove any diseased trees free of charge.

They appointed dedicated Dutch elm disease control officers, whose job often included scouting the local town and countyscapes on the lookout for the telltale signs of the disease. Trees identified for felling had large notices affixed to them. If the infection was found in a line or group of trees, excavators would be sent in to dig channels between diseased and disease-free trees, cutting the roots that could yet cause transmission.

Typically, a severely diseased tree would have its trunk ‘girdled’ (removing a ring of bark), to prevent spread of the fungus to the roots. Drastic action has been taken over the years to try and secure the lives of some veteran elms by severe pruning. Today, a number of heavily lopped and pruned elms can be seen in fairly rude health in Preston Park.

Another reason why the elm was fought for in Brighton and Eastbourne is the sheer number planted, most frequently, as street trees. Some of the finest Guernsey elms can be found, for instance, growing in Shirley Drive, Hove. Elsewhere, there are fine street stands of Huntingdon and other elm varieties.

Most of the elms in Brighton and Hove were planted by the Victorians and Edwardians. The trees were popular because they can tolerate thin chalk soil and salty winds. Planting continues today, with attention focused on developing an elm nursery belonging to the city.

Vigilance remains the watchword. In recent years there has been a sharp uptick in elm disease cases, which have variously been put down to warmer summers, the proliferation of wood-burning stoves and the traffic of diseased logs to fuel them.

A particularly bad year for the elm was 2020, with local losses of 669 trees. This even exceeded the toll in 1977, with Dutch elm disease at its peak, when 572 were lost in the Brighton and Hove area. In 2023, the city opened a new front in the fight against the disease. Tree inoculation programmes had largely been abandoned in the early days of the spread of the more virulent form of the disease, having been of limited success.

But following the success of Ulmus Maritime – the Conservation Foundation and East Sussex County Council’s programme for the Sussex coast’s elm landscape – the foundation and the council joined forces again to trial DutchTrig, a biological vaccine from the Dutch company Bomendienst. The vaccine, which is injected into the boles of the trees in springtime, has been widely used to great effect in the Netherlands, North America, Sweden and Germany since 1992.

A British company, Bartlett Tree Experts, has been licensed to carry out the work in East Sussex. Ron Schraven of Bomendienst explains how he believes the new defence works, ‘DutchTrig triggers a reaction that activates the natural defence mechanism of the tree. Because of this, the tree recognises the disease more quickly and can react to it in time, thus helping it to survive. It is a safe, easy and organic way of protecting elms.’

The Ulmus Maritime programme involved felling trees to limit the spread of infection – allowing thousands of mature elms to survive – and planting young trees.

During spring 2023, Bartlett Tree Experts injected 200 or so elms, predominantly on the Level and in and around the Royal Pavilion. Selected trees in Preston Park, including the remaining Preston Park Twin, were also injected. This process takes place each year and will, in the longer term, save the local council money, since it is far cheaper to inoculate trees than it is to cut them down and replace them. Nationally – and internationally – important mature English and Guernsey elm, which are particularly vulnerable, are now receiving a level of protection that should ensure that future generations will be able to look upon these giant veterans and marvel.

People simply cannot believe their eyes when they see Brighton’s famous trees – the remaining Preston Park Twin, reputedly the oldest remaining English elm in the world, or the hollow veteran, the Brace Elm in the Royal Pavilion Gardens, which was planted in 1776, the year of American independence. The Brace Elm is so old, it features in early paintings of Brighton, with fieldscapes in the distance. It got its name many years ago when a brace was put around its trunk to stop the ancient tree from splitting.

Some years ago, while I was making a film for the BBC’s Newsnight, Brighton Pavilion’s head gardener, Robert Hill-Snook, told me there were ‘gasps of excitement’ when visitors saw the Brace Elm, ‘because they haven’t seen an elm since their childhood and they look at them as if they’re going back into the past.’

The Royal Pavilion Gardens are also home to a large and remarkable weeping wych elm, which has become something of a tourist attraction, as well as being a source of great pride for many local residents. The Preston Park elms are believed to have been planted more than 400 years ago in 1616 – four years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed in America, when James I was on the throne and when Shakespeare’s plays were first being performed.

The Preston Park Elm lost its twin in summer 2020, and it too became infected in an upper limb in 2021. Swift action, entailing the ‘girdling’ of the affected limb, saw the tree recover. But recent occurrences of beetle infection have been taking place as diseased wood is brought in from outside the control area for use in woodburning stoves. News that this champion tree was treated in 2023 with DutchTrig is welcome news indeed.

The variety, rarity and age profiles of the elm population of Preston Park surely make it a candidate for UNESCO World Heritage status, or indeed the whole National Elm Collection.

Adapted by Angela Wintle

• Great British Elms: The Remarkable Story of an Iconic Tree and its Return From the Brink by Mark Seddon & David Shreeve (photography by Sam Ford) is out now (Kew Publishing, £30).