Forester Alister Peters tells a story of how the people of Brighton and Hove saved the city’s elm trees from the ravages of Dutch Elm Disease, turning the city into one of the only places in Britain where a large population of the tree survive.

I’ve always seemed to get the link between trees and landscape (possibly it came with my dyslexia), but it took some time and guidance before I understood the important connection with community.

I recall, about the age of ten, pinching the hatchet from my dad’s shed and going to local fields and woods and cutting down trees. They would have been pole-stage elms, slender but quite tall, and taken most of the day to cut through. Although the pretext for this graft was den-building, I did it, in truth, for the buzz. For the big crash but also for the way that my actions brought about a sudden change in the landscape.

Landscape value was further reinforced on leaving school and working as a forester for Dorset County Council, where I got the bug for tree planting. Although delivering a far slower burn, it was still changing the landscape. With some climbing experience and keen on caving at the time, I decided to try my hand at tree surgery and a career in Arboriculture. A different sort of crashing about in trees followed, with a bigger hit of adrenalin and one that came with the bonus of an audience.

Happy Valley Park, Woodingdean – Group of three Ulmus ‘260’ on the left and Ulmus ‘148’ on the right. These clones are  now exceptionally rare – Photo Peter Bourne

Ray Strong being awarded the annual Arborculturalist Association award – Photo Alister Peters

After three years studying Arboriculture at Merrist Wood College in Guildford, I moved to Brighton to work as Arboricultural Assistant for the borough council. This was the mid 1980s, so I had missed the pioneering days of the 1970s when the area had struck out alone and challenged all expert advice regarding elm disease (formally known as Dutch elm disease or DED). The arb team consisted of Robert (Bob) Greenland, John Harroway and Ray Strong. Ray was the leading light in the Save The Elms campaign, and it was he who, with the help of a local teacher (Mr White), had changed the course of history for the treescape of Brighton, Hove and Adur.

I had first met Bob Greenland and Ray during a study trip to Brighton in my first year at college. During the visit, I felt a pang of guilt for felling those young elms as a child in Weymouth, managing to suppress this only by reminding myself that they would be dead anyway: victims of the deadly fungus spread by tiny beetles, like so many elms across England, Wales, and later Scotland.

Ray was a complex character, as I was to discover during the four years I worked alongside him. He wasn’t always easy to get on with and his blunt approach to officialdom, including councillors, frequently got people’s backs up. He was employed as Arboricultural Supervisor, looking after a team of fifteen tree surgeons who undertook the maintenance of the council’s trees and all aspects of elm disease control works. Ray was very bright and a brilliant problem solver. Like many others, I was struck by his unique way of viewing things. He was clearly wired in a different way to the rest of us. I think it was this gift that was the major factor in the success of the Save The Elms campaign. (A campaign that so many within the Forestry Commission and other plant health experts said would never work.) Some years after Ray’s retirement he was awarded the Arboricultural Association’s highest award in 2008 for his contribution to Arboriculture. 

Royal Pavilion Gardens, Brighton, what is one of the largest Ulmus glabra ‘Horizontalis’ in Britain, growing near the Dome – Photo Peter Bourne

Shirley Drive, Hove – A line of very fine Ulmus minor ‘Sarniensis’. This is the most common street elm in Brighton and Hove – Photo Peter Bourne

Ray was able to step back, as the unfolding elm disease disaster spread along the south coast, and perceive just how devastating it would be for the area. He saw how it would vitally denude the coastal conurbation of Brighton, Hove and Adur of its tree cover (such was the dominance of the elm) and understood that if the disease went unchecked, as it had elsewhere, all would be lost. He saw that a different approach was needed to the techniques used in places like Portsmouth, where large sums were spent on fungal injections to counter the disease, and he believed that we had a geographical advantage, being in a somewhat isolated location, sandwiched between the Downs and the sea. This advantage he later went on to decry, as it became the mantra churned out by all and sundry to explain why the elms survived, when clearly it was not. Ray was adamant that the trees survived because the people of Brighton, Hove and Adur fought for them. Because they were prepared to go against the experts and many in positions of authority to do what they believed would save the elms. It took strong community action from local tree surgeons, gardeners, environmentalists and concerned residents to push three separate local authorities into taking collaborative action to stop the spread. To put this achievement into some sort of context: in the past, Brighton and Hove couldn’t work together to coordinate their separate tram and bus services, such was the division. Adur district in West Sussex might as well have been on Venus, for all it would have to do with East Sussex, which could have been on Mars.

Sanitation felling was, and still is, the principal weapon in the war against the disease. Strictly speaking, it’s a war against the elm bark beetles (Scolytus scolytus and Scolytus mutistriatus) which unwittingly spread the fungal spores (Ophiostoma novo-ulmi) from tree to tree as they feed and/or breed. This technique of removing infected host trees prior to broods of new young beetles flying on to infect other trees is useless unless you have other essential elements on side. The first is strong community support: volunteers who will call in signs or symptoms of disease, acting as extra eyes on the trees, a sort of arboreal early warning system. The second is funding to cover both local authority-owned trees and those in private gardens. In the early days of the campaign, volunteers would cut down trees without support from the councils and move the arisings to the roadside for the local authority to clear. On one occasion, a large consignment of elm timber, in the round with its bark still attached, was loaded into Shoreham harbour port where it was found to be hosting a large population of beetles. Despite the timber being in breach of the legislation preventing timber movement (the DED Restriction on Movement of Deceased Elm Order 1974), the authorities were slow in taking action. It therefore came down to the community to respond. A volunteer force armed with spades, axes and other hand tools descended on the port to strip the bark from the trunks. This was then burnt along with the larvae and beetles burrowed within to prevent any spread.

Royal Pavilion Gardens, Brighton, what is one of the largest Ulmus glabra ‘Horizontalis’ in Britain, growing near the Dome – Photo Peter Bourne

Eventually, after all the community action and a groundswell of local opinion, the authorities of Brighton, Hove and Adur (including West Sussex) began working in coordinated alliance, with 100% funding for all necessary works to control elm disease. The issue of full funding has been the crux of the control programme, and it has subsequently been shown that in East Sussex (where they had their own fully funded control programme along the south coast) control started to collapse and eventually fall apart when funding was first reduced, then removed.

Losses across the Brighton, Hove and Adur control area increased through the 1970s, peaking with the two long hot summers of 1975 and 1976, after which there was a marked and consistent drop. Techniques for control and tactics to fight the beetle were honed. Stronger links were formed across district borders; borders the disease naturally didn’t respect. As losses declined, residents began to think that the disease had gone away. By the time I arrived in Brighton in the mid 1980s there were a growing number of residents surprised that we still had to cut down trees due to “Dutch Elm Disease”. Even the Forestry Commission, which had always proclaimed that Brighton would soon become another casualty like the rest of the UK, began to think that possibly something special was happening down on the south coast.

A Super Urban Mature Elm, Queens Road Quadrant, Brighton – Photo Alister Peters

Portland Avenue, Hove – one of only two known Ulmus campestris ‘Laciniata’ in the world, both in Portland Avenue. Leaves have large, almost laciniated teeth – – Photo Peter Bourne

Then came the great storm of October 1987. I had the privilege of being called out to respond as the first trees were blown over. In the end, myself and Robert Greenland could only spend the night watching in awe as the town centre’s treescape was literally blown apart. We lost more elms in that single night than we did through the whole previous period of elm disease. The south coast suffered massive damage to its trees and the impact on my colleagues in Brighton, who had worked tirelessly for years both prior to and after the arrival of elm disease, must have been immense.

After the ‘87 storm there followed a couple of years during which elm disease levels spiked in the control area. This was probably due to elm logs cut and stacked in rear gardens providing an ideal breeding site for elm bark beetles. As the availability of the source of breeding material diminished the number of losses also reduced, and disease levels continued at manageable levels, but with fluctuations. This lasted until 2005-2010, when things started to change with disease management in East Sussex. The control programme suffered reduced funding and had to cut the contribution of the costs for private tree owners from fully funded to 50%. This was followed by further cuts until there was no financial assistance for tree owners, along with a pause in all control measures while an appraisal of the programme was undertaken. Whilst it did restart, the combination of these two actions sounded the death knell for the remaining elm trees in East Sussex. At a similar time, Adur district council had been suffering severe financial pressures and had to reduce its activity with the control programme. Sadly, Adur never gained much recognition for its plucky contribution to the campaign. Despite having a relatively small elm population, Adur’s strategic position between Brighton and Hove provided a buffer to the rest of West Sussex, where there were no controls. Adur remains a valuable ally – continuing to deal with trees in its own ownership promptly, but no longer assists with the removal of privately owned trees.

The loss of control on both flanks to the now unified city of Brighton and Hove resulted in a rise in losses. Initially, a slight upturn in infections may have been caused by beetles flying or blown in from the east and to the west. However, I believe that the increased availability of elm timber arising from the loss of control in East Sussex and the movement of this as firewood into the city has caused an ongoing problem. Wood burning stoves have become increasingly popular and these have sucked a vast amount of timber into the city. The last three years have seen some of the highest level of losses for many years and I think much of this is directly attributable to this factor. Increase in gas and electric prices have boosted demand, with residents also go foraging for timber in woodland or parks. Some of this wood will be elm and will be stored at home where it provides the ideal breeding environment for the beetles. In the future, ironically, we may only be saved from further losses as the availability of elm timber decreases in East Sussex and is replaced by a glut of ash, as ash dieback rampages through the landscape – ash making a far better fuel log anyway.

We now have an additional weapon in our armour against the spread of elm disease: Dutchtrig – a bio control vaccine – was deployed for the first time in central Brighton, with over two hundred of the best trees vaccinated in the spring of 2023. They were predominantly located in the Valley Gardens area that runs from the Level to the Old Steine and includes the Royal Pavilion Gardens. Initial indications are encouraging, but this form of inoculation is used as a prophylactic and requires a repeat jab every spring to provide cover through the beetle’s active summer season. Whilst it won’t provide protection against root spread infections or work against trees already infected, it could be a game changer in the continuing battle.

On the downside, the city has a large transient population and this makes communication of disease issues difficult. The message is not seen as news-worthy and, despite new media outlets, it’s difficult to get a repeated message out unless it is attached to the loss of a prominent tree. Each year there is a struggle to circulate information around symptoms to look out for in identifying elm disease and the importance of not storing elm logs.

Zigzag Sawfly has crept up in three known locations in the city, where it is spreading and proving to be a voracious defoliator of elm. Its impact and relationship to the control of elm disease has not yet been established but it is clear that the absence of foliage is going to make the early visual identification of elm disease outbreaks extremely difficult, potentially impossible. Why, and how exactly, the pest was allowed to get here is worth asking, as its steady march across Europe had been documented for some time. I fear that, once again, we have been let down by our plant health experts as well as our politicians. Only by adopting similar approaches to practices in places like Australia and New Zealand can we have any chance of protecting our natural environment from a host of new, and not so new, pests and diseases.

Brighton and Hove City’s treescape is now under the management of a new Senior Arboriculturist, Peter Small. He has expanded the arboricultural team since he joined the council, just three years ago, and has proven to quickly grasp the importance of the elm disease control program. Peter fully appreciates the role that elm plays across the city and has worked to improve links with the community to help in the fight against its spread and, in my view, is proving to be the best advocate that the city could have for its trees.  

Alister Peters is an Arboriculturist currently employed by Connick Tree Care and is seconded to work with Brighton & Hove City Council during the four months of the summer on the elm disease control program. He has lived in Brighton since 1985 and has worked with trees for virtually all his life. Alister can be contacted at alister@fiveways.myzen.co.uk

We’re also grateful to Peter Bourne for providing extra photographs of Brighton (and Hove) elms.