Fagus Sylvatica ‘Asplenifolia’

The foliage of ‘Asplenifolia’ is rather different for a Beech, a nice dark green with a good crisp fold down the midrib, so far so standard. But unusually the leaves of this cultivar also have distinct lobes, finely cut and frondy.  Does all that coppery orange yellow rust magic in the Autumn.

If you’re gardening on chalk then you know Beech trees are your buddies. Perhaps your spade is bouncing off a pre-glacial Pleistocene layer as we speak: this can be tiresome and can limit you, but only somewhat and now is a good moment to gesture towards our selection of Beeches. Again. Since we’re certain you already know about these superb trees and their relative tolerance for the white stuff, it’s just a matter of choosing one.

Given their habit of hanging on to their lowest boughs and forming a rather nice pyramidal sort of a shape this one will start out a dense and fluffy Walnut-Whippy cloud, maturing to more of a round headed and open-topped creature. Could reach 10-15 metres in height, and with a generous sprawl to match.

We’ll caveat our comments about this trees nonchalance around chalk a bit: don’t plant this directly into a chiselled hole in an ancient seabed: it will need some nourishment and something to dig its feet into. Enrich what soil you have as much as you can with plenty of organic matter and humus to give it the best start, and it’s worth noting too that as with all Beeches the shallow root network makes underplanting anything precious too close to it a bit of a risk. Give it lots of space to spread its roots and its branches and let it be its own individual. A very fine specimen tree indeed.

It does tend to do better in a sheltered position and likes things well-drained. Full sun as a splendid specimen, or light shade if planting as part of a more forest-y collection.

 N.B. When clipping several plants with the same tool, have a bucket containing a 5% bleach solution and swish your blades around for 30 seconds between plants to sterilise them. This will help avoid the chance of cross contamination of disease.