Hornbeam Seeds for the Tree Nursery

Another week of success for the Felbeck Trust tree nursery project, as four of us went seed collecting at our Sustead site on Saturday 3rd October.

While originally hoping to obtain some acorns for growing oak trees (which unfortunately did very well to elude us), we were able to get hold of a large number of hornbeam seeds, which marks the first species of tree that we’re now preparing for the tree nursery. We also made great use of some recycled McDonald’s bags to contain our collected seeds in!

Hornbeam Seed Collection

The 4 of us then headed over to our tree nursery site in East Beckham, where we were joined by volunteer Alan, who helped us separate the seeds from the leafy bracts that they were attached to. We also had some obligatory bourbon biscuits, which were very kindly provided by volunteer Simon.

Hornbeam seeds with leafy bracts

Hornbeam seeds minus bracts

Whilst we get the hornbeam seeds readied for planting, we will use our next session to collect some hawthorn seeds, and some blackthorn (sloe) seeds, at our West Beckham site, where hopefully some more biscuits will be available!

Jake Crumo

Oct 3rd 2026