Tree planting at Fajara War Cemetery, The Gambia... and tree pollarding at Railway Dugouts Burial Ground, Belgium
The effect of the drought on trees is not always easy to assess. Many were showing signs of stress by the end of summer but most will probably recover and it is not always possible to ascertain the exact reason for the demise of those that might die. At the Villers Bretonneux Australian National Memorial it quite clearly was the drought that killed newly-planted pines that had not been able to establish themselves.
The birch trees that formed the main avenue to the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede were nearly all blown down or severely damaged by a storm in January 1990. This year the trees were taken out, with the assistance of students from Merrist Wood College, who did the work as part of a tree project. The avenue was replanted with sweet chestnut trees, which are attractive, sturdy and long-lived, with large specimens being used to re-create a suitable approach to this much-visited memorial in as short a time as possible. Another large tree was planted at Yokohama War Cemetery, Japan. The tree, a New Zealand native Podocarpus totatara, was growing in the New Zealand embassy garden in Tokyo but had to be moved because of the construction of an extension to the embassy and it now has a home in the New Zealand section of the cemetery.
The drought in northern Europe led to restrictions on water use that affected not only horticulture, in places where supplemental watering is carried out, but also the cleaning of stonework by high-pressure water hose. In other parts of the world, where seasonal drought is the rule rather than the exception, work has continued to replace antiquated and inefficient irrigation systems with modern automatic systems that make optimum use of scarce and often expensive water resources by irrigating at night. In Australia, solar-powered control units have been installed in remote places where mains electricity is not available. The total number of new or upgraded irrigation systems completed this year was six in four different countries. In recent years, a number of irrigation systems have had water filters added to them because of impurities in the water supply staining
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