Fast Growing Trees

[Cosmo and Dibs]

Can you recommend any fast growing trees that I can grow from seed, please?

I'm not keen on conifers or leylandii.

I've just ordered some Monkey Puzzle seeds.

[snohare]

Birch, either downy or silver, are some of the fastest growing trees, and like well drained sandy soil - they will cope well with poor soils. The seeds are like tiny little brown butterflies, they have two little wings that help them go great distances in the wind. To find them, look in any house roof gutter near a stand of mature birch trees. The first year they may only be a foot high, but the second year they will be knee height or above if you are lucky.
Willows are keen on wet ground, will grow where when you dig the hole there is water in the bottom. The easiest way to grow them is not from seed - just cut a pencil-sized or bigger piece of twig off (including a few buds)and stick it in water almost up to the top, it will sprout white roots after a few weeks and you can stick it in the ground. Really easy, but take extra cuttings because they are prone to hundreds of diseases so you will lose some. In the first year they may grow more than a metre.
Neither of these likes clay, although willow will manage sometimes depending on the species and what sort of drainage/clay there is.
Ash is another one that grows quite quick, and can be coppiced - so good for keeping to a manageable size and for making tool handles. The seeds are really large and obvious to find, but ash can take two years to get going. The first year ash may only grow a few inches, the second year it begins to grow at the speed that birch does in its first year.
Neither ash nor birch will give very good shade.
Sycamore is known to tree nurserymen as a weed, being an invasive species it will outgrow just about any other tree in a field and will be knee height at the end of a single year. Grows in any soil as long as it is not too damp, winged (helicopter) seeds are well known. Once planted almost impossible to get rid of as it regrows from the roots, and will after a few years start throwing out thousands of seeds, 90% of which are viable. Like rabbits, cute to start with and in the end just a horrendous nuisance you wish had stayed in the Mediterranean ! (Not that I am biased or anything. Good choice with the monkey puzzle btw, watch out for rabbits, they will nibble the scales. Pretty slow growers though.)
Hope that helps.

[Alison]

Depends on what you want it for I suppose.

[ann-the-nan]

Fast growing trees

Yes, Willows grow quickly, but PLEASE be careful where you put it. our next door neighbour has a beauty but it is only a few feet from the main sewage drain. The neighbour often has drain blockage problems. Now, I am not saying there is a connection....
Someone else I know had one near the house. In spite of telling the council, he was poo-pood but one day he saw the roots in the bottom of the lavatory basin. Not that you are going to get any of these problems, but just be aware.

[snohare]

Ah yes, good point atn ! Poplars are the worst - you cannot get house insurance if you plant a poplar within a certain distance of some houses because they suck so much water out of the ground that they cause subsidence - but willows roots will seek out any water filled cavity such as a cracked clay field drain, and then grow for great distances along it. Common cause of flooding in fields is old clay drains blocked by willow roots.

[lainey lou]

Eucalyptus are fast growers, evergreen, pretty and useful! Love em.

[HayleyB]

Eucalyptus is also poisonous to horses

I was gonna suggest Willow as long at a way away from houses etc. Also one that's very quick growing to distraction is elderberry, they sprout up everywhere, we have loads

[Sanjed]

brilliant thread, i didn't know i wanted to know those answers until i read them. thanks everyone.

I've got a sycamore, a yew, a field maple, some kind of acer and 2 ash trees. I'm keeping them in pots indefinitely in case i move house, and i have to say, i love the ash trees the most when they're small.

i've also been told i've got a silver birch growing out the edge of my decking, it's raining, so no photo i'm afraid.

in the group shot - you've got (left to right) ash tree, ash tree, acer, sycamore, tree peony (sort of, but not really a tree)

then single shot of my ash tree, it's called Cole.

then the field maple.

i rely on my friend matt to tell me what they all are, so i hope he's right or i'm going to look like a div.

[Jardiniere]

ditch the sycamore...................

[BumbleB]

Not sure if it counts as a 'tree'. But Buddleia grows very quickly - cut it down every year and its back up in a jiffy, great as a screen shrub.

[ginger ninger]

Rowan berry grows quite quick and its useful, Burch which has been covered already.

[Cosmo and Dibs]

I think I'll get a leylandii.......

[snohare]

Bring back the birch, I say !!