Newton Nursery loading transplants 1981
Photographs courtesy of Alan Duncan, Newton Nursery.
Loading the nursery lorry with bundled transplants directly from the sheughing trenches in the nursery beds.
Difficult to see the people but Willie French the lorry driver is on the left fixing the raised sides on the lorry. Alan Duncan is forking on to the lorry with Colin Fraser forking the bundles from the sheugh to Alan’s feet. The young worker at the back of Willie French is unidentified as is the one on the extreme right of the picture.
This was the most common way to deliver plants to the forests before the general use of polythene plant bags. Loads of up to two hundred thousand young trees could be loaded onto a lorry which would then do a run to one single forest but more likely several forests which could be 150 miles distant. The bundles of trees were carefully built with their roots inwards at the sides, front and back of lorry but the middle was generally a jumble as they landed. If there were several drop offs, bundles were built in internal walls to signify the different orders and this can be seen as an internal vertical wall of trees is visible just below the edge of the cover.
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Groups: Forest Nurseries, Forestry Areas, Forestry in Action, Groups of people