News

This week, we are stratifying the Abies seeds for the 21 macro-gardens. Seeds will be shipped to participating institutes in mid April.

Parallel to micro-gardens, we initiated a network of common gardens – called macro-gardens – established using nurseries. 21 research institutes and nurseries across Europe joined this initiative. They will receive stratified seeds in April. We are looking forward to collaborating with all of you!

Back in August 2023 we set up the third and last cycle of germination trials in the climate chambers of WSL. Because of their limited size and the vast variety of our seeds provenances and families, we had to split the trials in 3 cycles. In each cycle, we tested germination under different temperature and humidity conditions, and different stratification lengths.

After many months of preparation and hard work, we are ready to ship the seeds and the material to our participants! 

Our parcels' recipies: a precise combination of provenances and families based on seeds origins and participants' location, labels to identify all seeds, detailed protocols in the language of the country of destination, tools to facilitate the garden's  installation and a special treat. 

Each one of our participant will receive 100 bags containing 20 seeds of either Fagus spp. or Abies spp. To count the seeds, we are using the Seed Counter Elmor C1, produced by the Swiss family company Elmor. The semi-automatic counter is a great and precise help, but still requires hundreds of hours of work from our team!

We are testing all the seeds collected during our 2022 campaign in the climate chambers of WSL! Before sending the seeds to the participants, we want to test their germination rate under different temperature and humidity conditions, and  different stratification lengths. We have  18 provenances of Abies spp and 14 of Fagus spp (with hundreds of families each) and only two climate chambers: the second cycle has just started!

We started early to ship the seed protectors to our participants. 100 participants located in Romania, Croatia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Hungary and Italy already received the seed protectores for the micro-gardens to be installed as part of the Trials 2023-2028. Production and shipping will resume in September 2023 after the summer break!

We went to pick up the first batch of seed protectors from our producer in Zero Branco (TV), Italy: LTM group. The LTM team took the opportunity to show us the machines they use to produce the seed protectors: a simple design, but not such a simple production process! Thank you LTM for the warm welcome, the tour of the factory and the great product.

In most regions, silver fir cones mature before beechnuts and should be collected first. Hundreds of kg have been collected in Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia, France, Germany, Czech Republic, North Macedonia and Montenegro. Now the teams are focusing on beech and different strategies are being used for collection.

Participants are joining us across Europe. Among them, some big institutions: we just signed a cooperation agreement with Hrvatske šume d.o.o., the company that manages most of the forests in Croatia. Hrvatske šume d.o.o is concerned for the threat of climate change and is willing to take an active role for the protection of forests. We look forward to this collaboration!

At the end of August 2022, the collection of cones of Abies alba has started in Switzerland, canton Wallis. Many other sites followed in Italy, Slovenia, France, Romania etc. Enjoy the pictures from the field campaign in our Facebook page.

WSL has just published an article featuring MyGardenOfTrees! If you want to read a short text on why we are doing this, where we are at, and what are we planning for the future, check it out here. The article is available in English, German, French and Italian! 

The call for registration has opened at the end of June and we already have enthusiastic foresters and institutions joining us from France, Croatia, Poland and Italy. Join us from your country and register to become a participant! 

MyGardenOfTrees hired experienced tree climbers that will help us collecting seeds this autumn. Valeska Holenstein, our tree climber from Switzerland, has already started training the rest of the team!

We are looking for local coordinators, living in Spain, Scandinavian countries and

Greece/Bulgaria/Albania, to join our European team!

Have a look at our offer. 

Nancy, Marta, Bernadett and Marjorie recently joined the team of the MyGardenOfTrees project as local coordinators. Check out the team page to discover the countries they are responsible for.

The Iranian Oriental beech seeds and the Slovenian silver fir seeds are the "early birds" of the field trials! This finding is consistent with our observations in the climate chamber.

Thank you to the 25 participants of the 2021–2023 trials for their engagement in the project!

Congratulations to Johannes Alt for completing his MSc thesis! We wish you enjoyment and success with your future endeavours!.

Two students from our team, Johannes Alt and Mert Celik, have been busy with a climate chamber experiment testing the seeds from various provenances that our participants of the 2021–2023 trials received.

We are dispatching parcels to our participants all over Europe! Each shipment consists of two parcels with:

• 100 seed protectors

• 300 metal pegs to fix the protectors

• 100 plastic tags that are already labelled

• 10,000 seeds

• a sign warning of the experimental site

• a detailed protocol

We set up the first micro-garden here at WSL to be able to test and improve the protocol before we send it out to our participants. Despite the snow and cold, we installed it in just a few hours. Not doing it alone (when possible) is the key!

The whole team is working to collect, organize and pack the seeds and the material that will be used by our participants in the 2021–2026 trials.

25 micro-gardens means 2,500 seed protectors, 2,500 labels, 7,500 stakes, 25,000 seeds...!

Read more about it.

Join us!

Seeds are coming from all over Europe (and beyond) and filling up our cold room. So far we have provenances from Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Germany, and France. We are expecting more soon!

The photo shows the boxes containing our precious seeds stored in the cold room at WSL.

The seeds are starting to germinate in the micro-gardens of our participants.

The photo shows silver fir seeds germinating in the garden of our participants in Scotland.

Our participants have received their tool kits with planting material and seeds, and they are setting up the trials in their forests. 

Photo from CREA Mont Blanc, Chamonix, France.

The tool kits required to set up the trials are ready to be dispatched to our very first participants in five countries: Italy, Scotland, France, Bulgaria, and Hungary.

We are designing and testing the first version of the protocol that will be used to set up the micro-gardens. To do so, we have established four gardens in the forest next to WSL and tested the effects of rodent exclusion cages (shown in the photo) and weed competition.