White Container

The white container has become synonymous with Barcham trees and remains central to the nursery’s expansion and continuous development for one simple reason, it works.

The whole experiment with white containers began in the early 1990’s with Peter Wells dissatisfied with the establishment rate of open ground and rootballed trees particularly when exposed to the harsh realities of urban planting.

'All the evidence suggested that both rootballed trees and open ground trees reached the customer damaged. It is an inevitable part of the lifting process that roots vital to the trees health are actually left in the ground when they are lifted from the nursery field. Rootballs are lifted with nursery soil but only thick roots remain with the active fibrous roots left behind in the nursery soil ready to be ploughed back in. The transplanted tree was then left to recover in its permanent planting site with obvious and high failure rates apparent.'

At the same time, Managing Director Mike Glover, then a student at Writtle, learned from an Australian nurseryman that white pots rather than traditional black ones were actually better for any plant which stays in it’s container for more than a few months. On joining Barcham a few months later Glover was delighted to see that the company was already seriously trialling those white pots with a view to full scale tree production.

'From the first time I planted a containerised tree from its conventional black container I hade doubts over the sustainability of the root system. So often a mass of fibrous and spiralled roots is applauded but I have always thought of them as a time bomb waiting to explode'

As the tree roots developed and reached the sides of the container they began to spiral randomly, like motor bikes on the wall of death, forming a knotted and tangled root system. At secondary thickening the roots knitted ever closer and were never allowed to establish laterally to form the anchorage necessary to sustain the weight of the plant above ground, with inevitably fatal results’

THE LIGHT POT

The Light Pot introduced in 2003 represents the latest development of the white container.
This pot incorporates a permeable and degradable mulch mat and a root barrier designed to assist customers where root invasion may be a potential problem.
Barcham has patented the design and now markets the container in the United States as well as producing trees exclusively in them for sale in the UK.

Ursula Buchan discusses the successes and quality of the White container method in an article written for The Guardian in 2003.

You can download this article below, or view it at this link.