£50 including tea and coffee

Audience

Amateur gardeners, nature conservation volunteers, entry-level professionals working in landscape or countryside management, forestry, gardening, public sector tree-work and nurseries.

Why

Tree pests and diseases have never been so great a problem as they are now, but the issues are often poorly understood. With a broad range of problems affecting trees it can be difficult to know where to begin as an amateur or entry-level professional. Summarising these tree health problems into basic categories and seeing some of them in person will get you off to the right start.

Aim

Introduction to Tree Health Problems is a half day course for people who want to know more about pests and diseases in trees. Teaching in the classroom and a short tour will be used to familiarise learners with some high profile tree pests and basic categories of problems that affect tree health.

Objectives

• Portray the environmental, economic and social impact of tree pests at a national level using introductory examples of priority tree pests.

• Provide a brief overview of the UK Plant Health Service.

• Combine introductory lecture and a short tree health tour of the arboretum to raise awareness of frequently found and priority pests and disease.

• Talk learners through the minimum information to collect to report tree disease.

• Highlight the importance of reporting concerns accurately, and where to report them.

• Introduce simple biosecurity measures that may limit the spread of tree diseases.

Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, you will be able to:

• Justify why it is important to limit the spread of tree pests.

• Outline who is responsible for the management of tree pests in the UK.

• Begin to categorise and recognise basic types of tree problems.

• Give named examples of public priority tree pests and describe the common symptoms that are useful to identify them.