If you want to plant a light woodland perhaps underplanted with wild primroses and bluebells or are looking for a luminous specimen tree for the garden, consider a birch, advises Charles Quest-Ritson
Most of us can recognise a birch tree when we see one. The dainty leaves, catkins, drooping twigs and rugged white bark are distinctive enough, especially the colour of the bark. Betula Pendula is our native species and one of the most widely dispersed of all trees. It’s geographical range extends all through Europe – in Mediterranean countries only in the cooler mountain areas – but in Morroco and then right across central Asia and Siberia to Alaska and Canada. Yet B. Pendula is only one of more than a hundred species of birches, some of which have limited natural distribution.
Our silver birch is a pioneer species, rapidly colonising bare earth, for example after a fire. Conservationists know that birch seedlings are a threat to heathland if not properly grazed. Many of our birch woods date back to myxomatosis, when there were not enough rabbits to nibble the seedlings, but birches cannot compete against stronger species for access to light, so they tend to be short-lived denizens of woodland edges.
In 2018 the British champion birch at Ambleside in Cumbria was found to be 30.3m high, a few inches short of 100ft. In mixed woodland, alongside massive English oaks, 30ft-40ft is the more usual height for birches.
However, in colder places, such as the countryside around Moscow, it is the birches that have all the height and vigour, growing to 100ft, whereas the oaks remain as stunted in-fillers, seldom reaching 20ft high.
The silver birch is the national tree of Russia, where they say it represents the grace, tenderness and natural beauty of Russian women.
‘Most beautiful of forest trees, the Lady of the woods’ was Coleridge’s description of our native silver birch.
Several cultivars of B. Pendula are popular garden plants. ‘Tristis’ has a stout trunk, but weeping branchlets; ‘Dalecarlica’ also has weeping branches but with deeply cut leaves; ‘Youngii‘ has dense, twiggy, weeping growth with no central leader; ‘Fastigiata’ makes a slender upright column, good for small spaces and ‘Purpurea’ is extremely useful in colour designed gardens for its dark purple leaves.
Almost all birches are easy to grow in English conditions. They may have a preference for certain situations – the river birch, Betula Nigra, from New England, US, is said to prefer sites where its roots can run deep into water,but,in practice, they seem to flourish anywhere. B. Pendula as equally as happy in the poor, dry sandy soils and brackish lakes of Surrey’s commuter as in the stony uplands of central Scotland.
How are birches best used in a garden? They make very good light woodland, creating a mini habitat where many other plants can flourish alongside them. The wild species are best, especially B. Pendula. Almost everything will grow happily in a woodland of silver birch – camellias, azaleas, rhododendrons and hydrangeas flourish. Many bulbs and low herbaceous plants do too – wild primroses, bluebells, wood anemones and lily-of-the-valley.
Selected cultivars are more difficult to place, especially those with super white trunks that call out for admiration and are not good for sharing their beauty with other trees. Plant them as statements, in avenues, or individually, as focal points. Perfect trees of any sort are rare in the natural world and woodland gardens should not be unnaturally bright.
Their colourful trunks offer year round beauty, but early autumn brings another dimension when birch leaves turn yellow or brown. No species takes on the shades of orange and red that so many other trees and shrubs do and, in hot, dry summer birches start to colour up and drop their leaves in August – but the autumn colour of birches is nevertheless one of their qualities. Betula Utilise is one of the last to drop its leaves.
Taxonomists have enormous fun sorting out the genus. Their job is complicated by the fact that all birches depend on the wind to disperse their pollen and their seeds, which means that when two species meet in the wild they give rise to large numbers of natural hybrids. However, DNA testing is beginning to confirm the existence of micro species of great rarity.
Gardeners tend to distinguish the species and forms by the colour of their bark. Caféau-lait Betula Platyphylla from Alaska, but pink or buff for Betula Ermanii {the cultivar known as ‘Grayswood Hill‘ is especially fine}, whereas Betula Albo-Sinensis starts out as rich toffee-brown then fades to fawn. It is worth noting that almost all birches have bark with long horizontal stripes known as lenticels in it and larger trees often have dark, rugged patches that burst through the colourful bark. Look at the black scars on the trunk of a silver birch and ask yourself whether they improve or detract from its beauty.
The garden value of birches has led to the commercialisation of an ever growing range of cultivars, selected for their bark. Good cultivars are usually grafted on rootstock of B. Pendula, but most species can be propagated from cuttings with surprising ease.
To consider all the possibilities, you really need to visit a good arboretum. Plant Heritage lists several with National Collection status. all in well-established gardens with much more than birches to admire. An interesting modern one is the late Kenneth Ashburner’s fine collection of wild-sourced birches at Stone Lane Gardens near Chagford in Devon, which is now an RHS Partner Garden. The most comprehensive, however, is at Wakehurst Place in West Sussex, best known as the country cousin of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, which has nearly 350 hybrids, cultivars and species, more than half of them grown from wild-collected seed. These include several that, although considered very rare or endangered in the wild, are actually available from several nurseries in Britain and sometimes grown from wild seed. Buy the tongue-twisting Betula kweichowensis from China and B Chichibuensis from Japan to make your own contribution to conservation Botanically minded collectors love the very rare B. Megrelica, a multi-stem shrub from the Caucasus, because its ploidy is inexplicably duodecaploid (12n = 168). Yes, the botany of birches is complicated.
Wakehurst’s National Collection is probably the largest in the world. The species are planted in groups in sparse mature oak woodland and visitors will notice that there is much variation among seedlings of the same species-scope for further selection. Some, including Betula Populifolia from eastern North America are naturallv multitrunked. whereas others exhibit much stouter growth than our own B. Pendula. The yellow birch, variously known as B. Alleghaniensis and B. Lutea, native to much of eastern Canada and south to the Appalachians, is one that makes a broad, strong tree with stout low branches. Use the RHS Plant Finder to check the ones that interest you and then go to a good nursery to make your choices.
Finally, a postscript. In spring, large quantities of sap rise up the trunks of deciduous trees. Birch sap contains abou 1% sugars and can be tapped in a similar way as sap from Canadian sugar-maples. Drink it fresh. boil it to concentrate it or ferment it. as the Russians do. It is said that birch beer contributes to the natural beauty of their womenfolk.
Reference Country Life UK 5th November 2025
Tree Weaver 