Nursery hit by ash ban
A nursery that has 3,000 ash trees it cannot sell due to a ban on the movement of the trees because of ash dieback disease.
The trees at D. W. Frost Nurseries, East Bridgford, have been inspected and passed as disease-free by the Food and Environment Research Agency, FERA, but they still cannot be moved.
The nursery estimates it has £60,000-worth of redundant stock — bigger trees sell for £70-£80 each.
The trees would have to be destroyed if FERA ordered it.
The restrictions mean ash trees cannot be moved or imported.
The owner of D. W. Frost Nurseries, Mr David Frost, said the sales ban had hit the company’s revenues.
It could be two years before the trees can be moved during which time they cannot be pruned or tended.
The nursery may have to destroy them anyway if they grow too big to be uprooted for sale.
November to March is the busiest time for the nursery as it is planting season
The nursery primarily sells ash trees to landscape gardeners, councils, farmers and individuals who want single specimens.
“We do not know whether they will have to be destroyed or whether, after further inspections, we will be able to sell them,” said Mr Frost.
“At the moment the nearest incidences of the disease have bee in Cambridgeshire, Leicester, Horncastle and Rotherham.”
Mr Frost recommends people with ash trees on their land collect all fallen leaves and destroy them.
The disease, chalara fraxinea, has infected many species of ash, but common ash is the most severely affected.
The disease causes loss of leaves, dieback of the crown of the tree and can kill it.
Chalara fraxinea started some years ago in Japan, but has been in Europe for ten years.
Mr Frost said even when the disease was first identified in the UK in February this year, the Horticultural Trades Association, and therefore the nursery industry, only learnt of its arrival in July.
His wife, and company secretary, Mrs Ann Frost, said: “People need to appreciate that the landscape around would be drastically changed without ash, just as it was after Dutch elm disease, and we never really recovered from that.”
She said an absence of ash would also hit furniture makers.
