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If you have space for just one tree within your garden, I would suggest you include our native mountain ash. It is the one native Irish tree that will provide you with colour for three full seasons, each and every year.
When selecting your mountain ash, you may see it labelled with its Latin name, 'sorbus aucuparia', its Irish name, 'an Caorthann', or one of its many common names, including rowan, quicken or roddin. However, the name mountain ash seems to have stuck because of its leaves' resemblance to the foliage of our common ash (fraxinus excelsior).
Mountain ash foliage consists of dark green compound leaves, composed of 7 to 13 individual leaflets. This foliage, feathery looking with edges that are serrated with small teeth, emerges fresh each spring to clothe the tree's grey-brown, smooth and shiny bark. Before shedding in autumn, these leaves provide us with their seasonal colours of orange, red and brown.
From May to June, the mountain ash trees produce their summer clusters of creamy-white blooms, which on mature specimens can contain up to 250 flowers per cluster. The insects that pollinate these flowers do us a favour by fertilising them, which then enables the formation of berries, for even more autumn colour.
September to October is when the bright red berries (8mm wide) are at their peak, only to be eventually stripped bare by the many woodland garden inhabitants, including thrushes and blackbirds. The juice within the berries has a laxative effect, which is unfortunate for the birds, but fortunate for the continuation of the trees lineage, due to its seeds being dispersed far and wide.
Mountain ash berries came in very useful for our Irish ancestors who used them to dye cloth, make jellies and flavour the beverage mead. Other early Irish, the Celtic druids, considered the mountain ash a lucky tree, its wood supposedly containing magical fire prevention properties when hung in house.
In the wild, the mountain ash tree thrives in areas with plenty of sunshine, and on peaty acid soils with quick drainage. These are the ideal conditions you should provide your specimen with, if you wish it to grow, flower and fruit well within your site.
Under such conditions, the mountain ash survives as a vigorous and hardy tree, growing up to 18 metres in height, with a possible lifespan of over a hundred years. Of course, it will often grow much smaller, especially in the cutting cold of an exposed location, which it will tolerate quite well, albeit with reduced growth.
On a recent trip out to Clifden, I spotted many examples of multi-stemmed mountain ash, which was more than likely a result of the young trees palatable foliage being grazed down by the sheep, only for each tree to later produce multiple new shoots from the base. Tough as you like, these seemed to be growing away quite healthly after their harsh cutting back.
So, no matter whether it's a single stemmed or multi-stemmed mountain ash, I suggest you plant one to take advantage of three full seasons of colour each year, in return for your few minutes spent planting. Until next week, happy gardening and remember that a weed is just a plant in the wrong place.
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